


No Going Back

by ssrhpurgatory



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Canon-Typical Subterfuge, Canon-Typical Violence, Goddard Futuristics is a trauma factory, Pre-Canon, Some Background Prytter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2008-07-25
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-07-19 19:05:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19979005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: A Hilbert-centric pre-canon fic, with dips into the Archives for transcripts that give insight into some of the people who helped Cutter make Goddard his.(There was a version of this that was shippy. That version has been slagged, and I've gone back to my original outline. This will never go beyond a T rating, and is pure Early Goddard Shenanigans.)Originally written 2019-2020, backdated.





	1. A Transition

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Missives from the Black](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509380) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory). 



_“I’ll be at that address until noon tomorrow. If you’re coming, find me before I leave.”_

**January 18th, 1989, 7:30 AM, St. Petersburg**

Dmitri stared down at the little rectangle of cardboard and scoffed. The man who had given it to him—this Mr. Carter—had been very persuasive, but it would take more than a few oblique threats and the offer of a state-of-the-art lab to make a defector out of Dmitri Vologin.

It was tempting. Of course it was tempting. This sort of thing always was, on the surface. But he did not think he would still be himself, if he left Russia. Not in that way, at the very least. Slinking off in secret, to join a big American corporation… No. That was not his way.

Dmitri went to rip the card up, but he paused, frowning, and set it down on his kitchen table as he went to put on his coat and hat. Well. The sun had not yet risen; noon was hours away. He had taken the night to consider it, but, perhaps… it was true, what Mr. Carter had said. Comrade Kinski was far less lenient than Dmitri’s previous superior had been. He wanted results, and he wanted them now, and he had been bringing that pressure to bear on Dmitri these past few weeks with increasing strength.

It was with that thought in mind that Dmitri picked the card up on his way out of the house, slipping it into a little slit in the lining of his coat before doing up the final button. He was not going to use the address, of course.

But it never hurt to have a backup plan.

_“Tell me. Did Comrade Kinski take the bait?”_

_“I do believe so, sir.”_

_“Excellent work, gentlemen.”_

Dmitri got to his lab to find it in an uproar. From the sound of it, one of the lab techs was having a panic attack in a closet, and his research partner, Kostya was nowhere to be found. Comrade Kinski had taken up station in the middle of Dmitri’s lab, overseeing a group of men who were removing some of the more specialized equipment—equipment that was necessary for Dmitri’s work—from the lab.

“What is meaning of this?”

Kinski raised an eyebrow at Dmitri. “You were warned of what the result would be if you kept failing to bring me results, Comrade Vologin. This equipment will be put to better use by scientists who are actually producing results that will benefit the party.”

“The results of this work will benefit _humanity_.” Dmitri gritted his teeth, pushing down a surge of white-hot anger.

Kinski scoffed. “What do I care about humanity? Just be glad that I am leaving you with what you need to get on with your work for a few months more. Perhaps if you have some results in that time, I will consider bringing some of this equipment back, yes?”

Dmitri balled his hands into fists and clamped his mouth shut. He could not give in to the urge to launch himself at Kinski, to attempt to beat the man into a pulp. Kinski’s goons would pull him off in an instant and it would be Dmitri who found himself beaten to a pulp, and there would go any chance of working himself out of this situation.

Where was Kostya?

_“Kinski’s leaving Vologin’s lab, sir.”_

_“Excellent. Let’s see if we’ve provided the right amount of leverage for our dear scientist, shall we? Is everything ready?”_

_“Almost, sir.”_

_“Make sure it’s good to go in five minutes. I don’t pay you to be_ almost _ready.”_

_“Yes, sir.”_

Dmitri waited in angry silence until Kinski was gone. Kostya still had not appeared, which made Dmitri wonder if he had received the same offer Dmitri had, if Kostya had defected and been caught at it. Perhaps that was what had caused this crackdown.

Kinski had continued to push Dmitri while he and his men ransacked the lab, searching for an excuse to do worse to Dmitri than they had already done, but Dmitri was not planning to give him the opportunity. Once the last of Kinski’s goons was out the door, Dmitri sprang into action, checking the remaining freezer and letting out a relieved sigh. Good. His samples were still there. Though what that meant for Kostya… no. No time to think about that. The best he could hope for was that Kostya had overslept today. The worst…

No time for that. An hour to gather what he needed and to get to the address.

And then he and his research would no longer be Comrade Kinski’s problem.

_“Vologin is on his way.”_

_“Excellent. What was that you said about needing one final touch? Oh, I see. Well, that will have to wait for Doctor Vologin to arrive, I’m afraid. Now someone get me Rosemary on the phone.”_

_“Here you are, sir.”_

_“Oh, very good.”_

It was ten minutes to noon when Dmitri arrived at the address on the card, lugging a case full of carefully packed vials and little else aside from the clothing on his back. Now was not the time to regret his other possessions.

Not that he had ever been one for keepsakes.

He strode up to the door and knocked on it briskly, and it was opened by a man who had the look of a low-life thug of some sort, albeit one in a very nice suit. The man looked Dmitri up and down, but did not ask who he was; he simply stepped to one side and ushered Dmitri into the house and down a hall to a sitting room of sorts, where Mr. Carter appeared to be holding court with a handful more men who were all just as brawny and just as well-dressed as the one who had let Dmitri in. A large, black bag occupied one corner of the room, obviously full of… something. Dmitri was not sure he wanted to know what.

As Dmitri stepped in to the room, Mr. Carter held up one finger, an indication to wait. “No, something distinctive, I think. We want to draw the eye away from his other recognizable features.” Mr. Carter paused for a moment, listening to the person on the other end of the line. “Fantastic. I know I can leave it all safely in your capable hands, Rosemary.” He hung up and looked up at Dmitri. “Vrach Vologin. I was starting to wonder if you were going to be joining us.

“I am here now,” Dmitri said, holding up the case he was carrying. “And here is my virus.”

“So _very_ glad to hear it.” Mr. Carter stood and crossed the room to stand in front of Dmitri, nodding at one of the goons as he did. Dmitri found himself divested of the hard case containing the samples of _Koschei Bessmertnyy,_ and instead was forced to meet Mr. Carter’s bright blue eyes, which seemed to bore uncomfortably into him. “Do you have a spare pair?”

Dmitri blinked, confused. “Spare… pair?”

“Of glasses,” Mr. Carter said, in the sort of tone Dmitri was used to hearing adults use on not-too-bright toddlers.

“No…?”

“A pity. Ah, well, we’ve got that covered on the other end. You’ll just have to make do until then.” And with that, Mr. Carter snatched the glasses off Dmitri’s face and handed them off to another one of the goons, who crossed the room to the big black bag. Dmitri made an abortive attempt to snatch the glasses back, and was immediately restrained by another of the goons.

“What is this?” he asked angrily.

“We don’t want people asking any uncomfortable questions, doctor,” said Mr. Carter, calmly. “So we’ve got just a little more work to do before we leave the country.”

Two sleek black cars had appeared outside the house since Dmitri had entered it, and he was bundled into one of them by a pair of the besuited thugs. The black bag was shoved carelessly into the seat next to Dmitri, and he eyed it dubiously as the car rolled into motion; the contents moved in a way that made him suspect—but no. What would they need with a cadaver? It must be something else.

Dmitri looked up, meeting the eyes of the front-seat passenger, who had twisted in his seat to stare at Dmitri. “Do you speak Russian?” The man did not answer, so Dmitri continued in English. “What is happening? Can you tell me?”

The man still did not answer. Dmitri was starting to wonder if the man was deaf when the car pulled up outside of a building that, even without his glasses, Dmitri immediately recognized as the one that contained his lab. “What-?”

Before he could finish his question, his door was flung open and he was yanked out of the car and hustled up a set of stairs that he only did not stumble on because he knew them so well, after working in this building for five years. He heard the sobbing of the lab tech who had been panicking earlier in the day, caught a glimpse of her wide-eyed, terrified face, covered in tears, heard the thug say “Get out of here, before we do to you what we are going to do to him,” in fluent, unaccented Russian.

“I demand to know what is happening!” yelled Dmitri in Russian, bracing his feet against the ground. The man escorting him tugged him off his feet, and the sound of the lab tech’s sobbing faded into the background. Still, there was no answer. Oh, _blyad_ , was this a set-up? Catch him attempting to defect, use that as an excuse to rid themselves of him entirely?

He was forced to his knees by the thug, and a second man forced a bag over his head. He let out an angry, wordless shout at the indignity. And then, very near his head, there was the sound of a gunshot, and the thump of a body. Had that been Kostya? Was he next?

But no, he was urged back to his feet, and he was able to shove the bag up so he could see. Immediately, he wished that he had not done that; the move revealed the body of a man on the floor who was very similar in build to Dmitri himself, wearing a set of clothing very much like the outfit Dmitri was wearing. As to whether there were any facial similarities, Dmitri could not judge. The man had very little face left, merely a bloody hole full of shattered bone and the shattered pieces of what Dmitri assumed must be his own glasses.

Dmitri felt a little bit ill, but before he could react, the hood was tugged back over his face and he was whisked off down the back stairs of the building and into another car.

“You can take that off now,” said Mr. Carter’s voice.

“Could have warned me,” said Dmitri in a careful, measured tone as he tugged the bag back off his head, certain that if he let go of what tenuous control he currently had over his emotions, he might start screaming.

“Ah, but your acting wouldn’t have been _nearly_ as good,” said Mr. Carter, flippantly. He made a casual gesture towards the driver, and the car started moving. Dmitri could not tell what direction they were moving in—his attempts to orient himself as they drove were hindered by the fact that without his glasses, even Mr. Carter’s features were indistinct and blurry unless Dmitri leaned in far, far closer than he felt comfortable being to this unpredictable man—but even so, he got the impression that they were not heading towards a public airstrip of any sort.

Before they got too far along, there was a concussive boom; Dmitri looked out the back window and, to his shock, saw a tower of flame behind the car. It died down quickly, but Mr. Carter’s lack of concern left Dmitri certain that the explosion had been expected… which meant that his lab was most likely in the center of that conflagration.

He hoped the thugs had taken the time to empty the building before setting it ablaze.

He suspected, given what seemed to be the relatively ruthless nature of the man in the car with him, that they had not.

A half-hour drive later, and Dmitri’s suspicions about their destination were confirmed; they pulled into what looked like a mostly-disused airstrip. A small, powerful-looking passenger plane was parked there, and a pair of waiting attendants opened Carter and Dmitri’s doors, then unloaded the remaining contents of the car.

“Come along now,” said Mr. Carter. Dmitri followed, feeling blank and hollow. Sometime during the drive to the air strip, he felt as if he had come unmoored from the world, as if the ground were no longer solid beneath his feet. The fifteen feet to the plane were not enough to convince his mind of the solidity of the world around him, and once aboard…

Mr. Carter opened the door to a compartment. It was cozy, comfortable; several plush seats, a table, what looked like a bed. A thousand times more luxurious than his small apartment, and almost as large. “Do try to get some rest, Doctor Vologin. One of my assistants will be in here with some paperwork for you once we’ve taken off.”

Dmitri found that speech was beyond him at this point; the shock of the past few hours was finally making itself felt, and once Carter left him, he barely managed to stumble over to one of the seats and collapsed into it, trembling.

He did not know if he had chosen the correct path.

But there was no going back now.

Once the plane reached cruising altitude, one of the two attendants—or perhaps some third person he had not yet met—came in with a folder full of assorted paperwork. An American passport, a driver’s license—though when he would ever use such a thing, he did not know—and a contract, among other things. The attendant took him through the stack of papers, pointing out where he needed to sign and initial. Dmitri did his best to read the entire thing, but the attendant was rushing him through it—on purpose, Dmitri suspected—but even if he hadn’t been, well, without his glasses, trying to read the entire thing would have been an exercise that only resulted in a headache. He simply hoped that he would get a copy for himself once everything was signed, and that the attendant’s summary was accurate.

Though truth be told, as long as Dmitri had access to the lab, to the financial support, to the staff that Mr. Carter had promised, he did not much care about the finer details of the agreement. All he really wanted was to be left alone to get on with his work, and based on the contract, it seemed that Mr. Carter was willing to let him do that… provided he bent his brain to other research projects when time afforded, of course.

After the contract was signed, the attendant went briefly over the remaining paperwork, offered Dmitri a drink or something to eat, and, when he refused, suggested he get some sleep and left the compartment for the time being.

Dmitri tested the bed. It was obscenely comfortable, but when he tried to lay down and relax, when he shut his eyes, the only thing he could see was the body of the man who looked like him, the shattered face that might have been his.

So instead, he sat back down at the table and squinted his way through the rest of the paperwork, taking in what information he could retain. His new alias—Karl Kelley, apparently—the name of the manager who would be overseeing his lab—Rosemary Epps—the names of the techs who would be working under him—Aditi Korai, Andrew Lin—but no, names had never been his strong suit, and he had found himself uncertain of what the names had been bare minutes after he moved on to the next page. He flipped back to check the names again, but decided he would be able to learn them better once he had faces to go with them.

He wondered how long it was going to take until his alias sat on him as well as his birth name.

His head was starting to hurt. He tried the bed once more, and again, the image of the corpse of the man who had looked like him flashed behind his eyes. So instead, he paced.

He did not know how long it was—an hour? Perhaps two?— when the attendant checked on him again. Dmitri took the man’s offer of food and drink this time, and was brought a rather splendid dinner and a coffee.

And then… he paced. He tried, oh, he tried to sleep. Laying on the bed, sitting up on one of the plush seats, even laying flat on the ground, but every time, the panic set in once more.

He wondered if he would ever be able to sleep again without seeing that image in his mind.

**January 19th, 1989, 2:32 PM, Cape Canaveral**

“We’re here, Doctor.”

Dmitri blinked himself awake, eyes bleary from the nap he had just taken during the car ride from the landing strip, short as it was. But at least he had finally slept. He reached up to adjust his glasses before remembering they weren’t there any more.

Mr. Carter had already turned away from Dmitri to his window, which he had rolled down, and had started talking to the indistinct shape of the person outside.

“Rosemary. How good of you to meet us.”

The indistinct shape responded in a cheerful female voice. “It is my job, sir.”

“Still. You could have left this to your assistant.”

The driver of the car had opened the door next to Dmitri at that point, and was pointedly staring at him, so Dmitri missed what came next as he clambered out of the car and stood unsteadily, clutching the pile of paperwork and identification that he had been given on the plane to his chest. And then the driver closed the car door, slid back into his own seat, and drove off, and he watched it go, feeling disoriented and exhausted and completely lost.

He looked down at the papers he was holding, frowning. They, and the clothing on his back, were quite literally all he owned in the world at the moment.

The shape who had been talking to Mr. Carter through his window crossed to his side, resolving into a short, wide, dark-skinned woman, with very tall hair and a very teal suit. Details were beyond him without his glasses, but he could tell that she was smiling at him. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Kelley,” she said, holding a hand out to him, with something clasped in it. “My name is Rosemary Epps, and I’ll be managing your lab. You can just call me Rosemary, though, everyone does.”

“Er. And you can call me Dmitri—no. What was the name?” He shuffled the papers in his arm around, pulling out a passport and squinting nearsightedly at it, searching for a reminder of his new alias. “Karl, apparently.”

The woman—Rosemary, he reminded himself—laughed at that, and waved the contents of her hand at him. “Here. This will help.”

He reached out and took the object from her, and it turned out to be a hard case, the sort glasses came in, which he proved incapable of opening one handed. Rosemary tsked, and took it back from him, opening it and holding up a pair of thick, black plastic frames, very different from the round wire-rimmed ones he was used to.

“May I?” she asked, and he nodded, too tired to do anything else. She folded the arms of the glasses out, carefully reaching up to settle them on his face, smoothing the arms over his ears, tweaking them to lay straight.

In front of him, her face resolved to that of middle-aged black woman, well made-up, hair just as tall now that it was in focus as his first blurry impression of it. She had to be very short, he thought; a glance down at her feet revealed heels of an inch or two, but even with them the top of her head just barely reached his nose, and he was not a tall man. Her shoulders, on the other hand, were a good few inches wider than his own, even under the shoulder pads of her expertly tailored teal dress suit. The overall impression she gave was one of… abundance, he forced himself to think, setting several rather more rude descriptions aside.

She gave his glasses a final tweak, and smiled, a bright, startling flash of teeth that lit her entire face up, and he almost stopped breathing for a moment at the warmth of it. “There. That’s better. Would you like to see your apartment?”

Dmitri nodded, and the woman put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around gently to face the apartment building behind them. “Lucky you, you’ll be right next to me,” she said, grinning up at him and herding him efficiently through the front door, which she opened with a keycard.

He frowned at the keycard. “Do I have one of those?”

The woman—he had already forgotten her name—grinned up at him again. “Oh, yes. It should be with your paperwork.” She led him to a door one from the end of the hall, and pulled a ring of keys out of her pocket, unlocking the door and then dangling the keys off her index finger in Dmitri’s direction. “And these are yours as well,” she said, dropping them into his open hand when he held it out. “Now, I rather suspect you’d like to sleep the clock around just about now; Mr. Carter tells me you didn’t get much rest on the plane. But if you get hungry, there’s food in the fridge and more supplies in the pantry, and if you need anything, I’ll be just down the hall for the rest of the night, and my office number is on the pad right next to the phone, all right?”

Dmitri nodded. “When… what do I do next?”

The woman cocked her head to one side, considering him. “I’ll pop in tomorrow morning and see how well you’ve recovered from the flight first, I think. We’ll decide how quickly to integrate you based on that.”

Dmitri nodded again. It seemed to be the only response he could manage at the moment.

The woman reached out and took the pile of papers out of his hands, tucking them against her chest, and then took the keys back as well. With her free hand, she grasped him by the elbow, guiding him down the entrance hall to a small living room. She set the papers and keys down on a side table in the living room and opened a door off the living room, revealing a bedroom. “Doors in the entrance hall are kitchen and bathroom, bathroom on the same side as this. Now sleep, Dr. Kelley. You have a lot of work ahead of you, and you can’t do it if you’re exhausted.”

“Told you to call me Dmitri,” he mumbled, staring blankly at the bed. It had been a very, very long day, the length of two normal days, and it had started with Mr. Carter and his subordinates faking Dmitri Vologin’s death, and it seemed that the shock of that particular maneuver of Mr. Carter’s was finally getting to him, along with the exhaustion of being too tense to sleep during the entire plane ride from Russia.

“No, you told me to call you Karl, but I prefer not to.” The woman sighed, and took his elbow again, pulling him through to the bedroom, turning him, making him sit and then lay down on the bed, maneuvering him as if he were a child. He followed her gentle nudges and shoves without resistance, and then he lay there, staring up at the ceiling, hardly registering it as she pulled his shoes off, then came and took his glasses, folding them back up and putting them back in hard case they had come in before setting them on the side table. “Sleep,” she said, looking down at him, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’ll all sort itself out in your brain in the morning, I promise.”

He sighed, and shut his eyes, and slept.


	2. Transcript: Interview, Rosemary Epps

**TRANSCRIPT TAKEN FROM THE FILE OF ROSEMARY EPPS**

**DATE:** July 23rd, 1976, from 4:02 PM to 4:48 PM

 **LOCATION:** Grayson Biotech

**PARTICIPANTS:**

Arthur **KELLER** , head of Communications at Goddard Futuristics

Rosemary **EPPS** , lab manager at Grayson Biotech

Albert **BENNETT** , [redacted]

**[RECORDING STARTS]**

**[SOUND OF PAPER RUSTLING, FOLLOWED BY A KNOCK ON THE DOOR AND THE DOOR OPENING]**

**KELLER:** Rosemary Epps?

 **EPPS:** Yes, sir.

 **KELLER:** Come in. Have a seat.

 **EPPS:** If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Bennett, I don’t think I will. See, this isn’t the first time I’ve been through a merger, and I know how it goes. You’ll sit me down and talk about all the wonderful changes that are coming down the pipeline now that Grayson and Goddard are as one, and then you’ll tell me that unfortunately, there isn’t any place for someone of my particular talents in this brave new world you plan to build. And then you’ll offer me up a severance packet that will, most likely, be frankly insulting in the face of the bonuses the C-suite is going to be getting as part of this merger, and I’ll smile and nod and go off on my merry way. So how about we skip directly to the insulting severance package and me going on my way, hm?

 **KELLER:** **[LAUGHTER]** Oh, well done, Miss Epps. Or can I call you Rosemary? Rosie?

 **EPPS:** Rosemary is fine, sir.

 **KELLER:** Rosemary, then. I see you have some misconceptions about the nature of this interview. Let me clear those up for you. **[PAUSE]** I am not Mr. Bennett.

 **EPPS:** And who, then, do I have the pleasure of meeting?

 **KELLER:** My name is Arthur Keller, and I am very pleased to meet you.

 **EPPS:** I see. **[PAUSE]** This is the other kind of interview, then, isn’t it.

 **KELLER:** You are quick on the uptake, aren’t you.

 **EPPS:** And what kind of job did you have in mind for me, Mr. Keller?

 **KELLER:** Oh, don’t be so impatient. There are just a few preliminaries to get out of the way first.

 **EPPS:** Then please do continue with the preliminaries, sir.

 **KELLER:** I was hoping we could start with you confirming a few things for me. **[PAUSE]** Your bachelor’s degree is in microbiology?

 **EPPS:** Yes.

 **KELLER:** Doesn’t that make you a bit overqualified for what is, essentially, an admin position?

 **EPPS:** It’s not unusual for a lab manager to have a degree in a science. Most of us started as research scientists or lab techs. I’m no different.

 **KELLER:** I see. So tell me, how did you wind up here?

 **EPPS:** The usual way. They hired me.

 **KELLER: [LAUGHTER]** I mean how did you wind up here, Miss Epps? You were shaping up to be a brilliant research scientist. You’d published seven papers, all very well received—as a co-author, of course, but the work was yours—as an undergraduate. At least four different research institutions were courting you for graduate school, and I know one company in particular was hoping to snatch you up before then. And you were doing this all as a Black woman, in the 1950s, when there were still plenty of places in this country where there were laws against you being in the same classroom as whites. But you did it. And then, nothing. You never finished your thesis, you barely scraped together enough credits to graduate, and all those sparkling offers disappeared. So what happened, Rosemary?

**[PAUSE]**

**EPPS:** I’d ask how you know all that, sir, given that it’s more than 20 years in the past, but I imagine you have your ways.

 **KELLER:** Oh, I’ve only heard a rumor or two.But I’m more interested in the truth. So what really happened?

**[LONG PAUSE]**

**EPPS:** You must have read my personnel file. I’m difficult to work with.

 **KELLER: [LAUGHTER]** I do like someone who knows when to be discreet. And I like difficult people. They get things done.

 **EPPS:** We still haven’t gotten to the sort of things you want me to do, sir.

 **KELLER:** Let’s circle around to something more recent, then. Tell me about your time with E.L. Pharmaceuticals.

 **EPPS:** What do you want to know?

 **KELLER:** I’m rather curious about the, oh, how to put this delicately. **[PAUSE]** The human resources side of your position there.

 **EPPS:** You’re talking about the trials on human subjects, aren’t you. I wasn’t involved in that whole fiasco, thank goodness.

 **KELLER:** Weren’t you?

 **EPPS:** Of course not. I didn’t let my lab experiment on anyone who might be missed.

 **KELLER:** Rapists. Abusers. Murderers. Especially those of children. An elegant solution.

 **EPPS:** I found it to be so. It certainly helped with the ethical objections my scientists had.

 **KELLER:** I see. And you have no objection yourself to carrying out other such experimental trials in the future?

 **EPPS:** None whatsoever. Provided, of course, my standards for what makes an acceptable subject are met.

 **KELLER:** I think we can arrange that, yes. **[SOUND OF PAPER RUSTLING]** You’ll eventually be managing a team of five, some of the top scientists in the world. It’s likely they will rotate in and out from some of our satellite locations from time to time. The core group you will be in charge of is chemical and biological research, including virology and pharmaceuticals—and don’t give me that look, your job history is sufficiently broad to deal with anything in those overarching categories, and I’m sure plenty more beyond that.

 **EPPS:** Well, yes, probably. **[SOUND OF PAPER RUSTLING]** This is generous.

 **KELLER:** We will expect you to be on call 24/7. Of course we’re offering an on-site apartment and enough money to make it worth your while.

 **EPPS:** I’d like the weekend to think it over.

 **KELLER:** Rosemary, I’m a very busy man. I can’t wait on other people to dither and dally about what decision they plan to make.

 **EPPS:** You’re assuming that this offer is something I can’t resist. Well. It’s not. Even for the amount you’re paying, you’re asking a hell of a lot of me. I need the weekend to decide whether or not it will be worth it when the work you’re offering me isn’t any different than what I could find at half a dozen other companies, if I chose to really sell myself to them.

 **KELLER:** Very well. You can have the weekend.

 **EPPS:** Thank you, sir. I’ll let your contact here know when I’ve made a decision.

 **KELLER:** My contact?

 **EPPS:** That tall drink of water out in the anteroom. He’s one of yours, isn’t he.

 **KELLER:** You really are quick on the uptake, aren’t you, Rosemary.

 **EPPS:** Indeed. Are we done here, sir?

 **KELLER:** Yes. I look forward to your decision.

**[SOUND OF A DOOR OPENING AND CLOSING ONCE, AND AGAIN A FEW MINUTES LATER]**

**KELLER:** You’re getting sloppy, Al. She made you.

 **BENNETT: [LAUGHTER]** I told you she was bright. Which offer did you end up giving her?

 **KELLER:** The basic one.

 **BENNETT:** I’m not sure that will be enough to tempt her.

 **KELLER:** I know. She said as much to my face. But I couldn’t give her the enhanced offer. There are just too many unknown variables.

 **BENNETT:** Look, sir, I know she’ll be a good fit for Pryce. If it’s an issue with the profile I assembled… **[BENNETT TRAILS OFF]**

 **KELLER:** Oh, no, that profile is some of your best work. But it still has gaps. And it’s those gaps I’m worried about.

 **BENNETT:** She wouldn’t say anything about it, then?

 **KELLER:** No. And I agree that she’ll be an excellent fit for Pryce, but I also think she’s more volatile than you’ve realized. I’m not letting her in until I know her weak points. All of them.

 **BENNETT:** Give me the other offer.

 **KELLER:** Al.

 **BENNETT:** Look, sir, I’ll get you what you need. Right now, as far as she can tell, you’re offering her the same thing she could get any one of a dozen other places. She might still walk away. But Pryce… She’ll want that. Enough to set aside her caution. I can get her for you, sir.

 **KELLER:** I know why I want her. But why are you so enthusiastic about this woman, Al? Has your stone heart been pierced at last?

 **BENNETT: [LAUGHTER]** God no. But I like her. And I think she’s capable of the kind of loyalty you need. She just needs the right incentive. **[PAUSE]** If you don’t mind, sir, why are you so interested?

 **KELLER:** Biofuels. **[SOUND OF PAPER RUSTLING]** As a college student, she managed to cultivate a strain of bacteria that produced a clean-burning biofuel from food scraps and human waste, something that our scientists are just now starting to look into. Goddard Futuristics was trying to recruit her, until whatever happened to her happened, and both she and her research disappeared off the face of the earth. If I’d been with the company back then, she would have been ours. I don’t like feeling as if I’ve had toys that should have been mine snatched away before I knew they existed.

 **BENNETT:** But she isn’t that, not any more. She hasn’t done any original research since college. Why do you want her now?

 **KELLER:** I still want the toys that should have been mine, Al. Even if they’re broken now. **[PAUSE]** Is this recorder still going? I can never tell with these prototypes of Pryce’s.

 **BENNETT:** Here, sir.

**[RECORDING ENDS]**


	3. A Tour

**January 20th, 1989, 5:32 AM**

Dmitri woke up to a mostly dark room, groggy from the aftereffects of being awake for nearly two days straight and the adrenaline high that had kept him that way. Almost as bad as a hangover, in its way.

There was a brief moment of disorientation. The shadows of the room were all wrong, the bed too soft beneath him, the air too warm. And then, he remembered.

He snagged his glasses case off the bedside table and put them on, letting out an involuntary sigh of relief as the room came into focus. Yesterday would have been enough like a bad dream had he been able to see properly; without his glasses, it had truly been a nightmare. And it still felt like one, in this room that was not his own.

Light. Light would help. He fumbled at the lamp on the bedside table, eventually locating its switch in the dim glow coming from a nightlight on the other side of the room, and then shoved himself upright, wincing. His clothing was damp with sweat, and had dug into him in awkward places as he slept; his muscles were sore and stiff, still vibrating with the tension that had kept him pacing back and forth in the compartment he had been confined to on Mr. Carter’s plane.

One thing at a time. Sleep. Light. Next, water; his tongue was stuck to the top of his mouth, his throat dry.

Fortunately, someone—most likely the woman who had brought him to this apartment the night before—had left two bottles on the bedside table, one of water and another of some unnaturally yellow beverage that almost seemed to glow in the light of the lamp. He drank the water down, and, after a careful examination of the ingredients of the yellow beverage, downed it as well. It was peculiar, but at least he was no longer thirsty.

Hunger made itself known next, and whoever had left the beverages had foreseen this need as well. He picked up a small bar wrapped in silvery plastic and frowned at it. “Chewy chocolate chip granola bar? Huh.”

His voice seemed very loud in his ears.

His bladder urged him out of bed shortly, and after a quick trip to the bathroom he returned and ransacked the drawers of the chest of drawers, which yielded up more clothing than he had owned at once in his entire adult life. All his size, and very similar to what he was currently wearing. He frowned, and dove into the closet next. He had no idea what had happened to the coat and scarf and bearskin hat he had been wearing when he boarded Mr. Carter’s plane; he had removed them during the flight and did not remember whether he had picked them up again before disembarking.

The closet yielded up several suits and a pile of collared shirts, but of his winter gear, there was no sign.

Well, no matter. Florida was supposed to be warm, was it not? He would not need such garments here.

The clothing reminded him that he had been wearing the same outfit for more than two days now. His basic needs were met, and now he could think of more.

The water in the shower was hot, well and truly hot, not the lukewarm-edging-to-tepid he had become so used to from the taps in his apartment back in Russia. The soap was smooth and lathered well, and left him smelling rather like lavender, and like everything else was a world away from what he was accustomed to. And after he was clean, after he had scrubbed every bit of himself that he could reach, he lingered in the shower a bit longer, enjoying the heat, letting the water pound the lingering stress of the past few days out of his body.

There were obviously advantages to defecting.

He emerged from the bathroom only to find a brightly-colored note had appeared on the wall across from the bathroom door, with the word “BREAKFAST” written on it in a round, sprawling hand, an arrow pointing towards the empty doorway into the kitchen. He fumbled for the light switch—none of the natural light that creeping in through the living room blinds made it that far—and when he found it, the light revealed a cramped kitchen with a round, high table and two chairs near one wall, and, on that table, a styrofoam box. The contents of the box were pancakes and sausage and eggs, and something that might be potatoes, heavily spiced and fried, all still warm, so very American a breakfast that it made him smile a bit. That woman, that lab manager—what was her name?—must have brought them for him. Another brightly colored note pointed out a drawer that contained silverware, and he was suddenly hungry again, hungry enough to attack the meal like a ravenous beast. A vast improvement over the granola bar, even if the flavors were unfamiliar.

He was rinsing the silverware in the sink when he heard a knock at the front door of the apartment. For lack of a dish towel, he wiped his hands on his trouser legs and went to answer it. It was the woman who had greeted him yesterday and shown him to his apartment. She smiled up at him, that same bright smile she had used on him yesterday, and as before it left him just a little bit breathless.

“Good morning, Dr. Kelley. Have you had your breakfast?”

Dmitri nodded, and she responded to his nod with an approving little nod of her own.

“Good. I know it’s early, but would you like a tour? The campus is an absolute maze, so the sooner you learn your way around, the better.”

And perhaps it would help him ground himself once again. “I would appreciate that. Thank you. Let me put on shoes.” He left the door ajar and padded down the hall to the bedroom door.

“Don’t forget to grab your keys and find your keycard!”

Dmitri waved a hand over his shoulder in acknowledgement and detoured to the living room to scoop the keys of the small table she had d left them on and to shuffle through the paperwork for his keycard. He found it adhered to a list of locations and instructions and folded the entire thing up, sticking it in his pocket for now as he did a quick once-over of the remaining paperwork in the hope that the name of the woman standing at his door would jump out at him from among the information those papers contained.

“Haven’t got all day, Dr. Kelley!” Despite the fact that the woman’s voice was still cheerful, something about the way she had said those words had him hopping back into action immediately, diving through the door of his bedroom and grabbing his shoes, stuffing the laces down the sides instead of bothering to tie them. He came back out of the bedroom and her eyes went immediately to his shoes, one of her eyebrows quirking in amusement. “We do, however, have enough time for you to tie your shoes.”

“Right. Yes.” Dmitri sat on the couch, feeling rather… well, rather like a gauche schoolboy, truth be told. For all the woman’s tone of voice was kind, cheerful, amused even, something in her voice went straight to the hindbrain and demanded compliance in a way that reminded him of some of the strictest teachers he had encountered as a child.

This woman was going to be a terror to work with.

She smiled at him when he finally joined her at the door, and he offered up a hesitant smile of his own.

“Ready to go?”

“Yes, er, Miss…?” Dmitri trailed off, looking hopefully at her.

The woman laughed. “Yesterday was a _very_ long day, wasn’t it? It’s Rosemary Epps.”

“Miss Epps.” They stepped out of his apartment and he jangled the keys in her direction. “Locking up necessary?”

“I'd say so, yes. The campus is pretty safe, but, well, that doesn't stop people from being snoops if they find an unlocked door,” Rosemary said firmly. “And please, call me Rosemary. All of my scientists do.”

”Then you should call me Dmitri.”

Rosemary sighed. “Your name is Karl now, Dr. Kelley. In case you've forgotten, Dmitri Vologin is dead.”

Or perhaps not. Dmitri followed along at Rosemary’s side as they left the building, his mind flung back to two days ago, to his lab, to that corpse…

Rosemary rapped on a door as they passed it, and his mind snapped back to the present moment. “Laundry is downstairs. It's free, but we can also arrange for a laundry service if you need it.”

“You should call me Karl.”

Rosemary grinned up at him as she pushed out the front door of the apartment building. “Not a chance. But you should get used to calling yourself Karl. I hear it helps new names stick.”

They had emerged into a small parking lot and early morning air that was already muggy. Dmitri found himself looking around with interest. Two days ago he had been in a Russian winter; Florida was as different from what he was used to as night from day. “Hm. Is there anywhere we could get coffee?”

“This way to the cafeteria.”

Rosemary’s assertion that the campus was a bit of a maze had not been an exaggeration; paths meandered and split, with no obvious indication of their eventual destinations, all shrouded in greenery that blocked clear lines of sight. And despite the fact that Rosemary was both remarkably short and wearing heels, Dmitri found himself hard-pressed to keep up with her; remembering the twists and turns they took to get to the cafeteria was completely beyond him.

The cafeteria, when they reached it, was massive and clearly the source of his breakfast, which left him with high hopes for the coffee… until he took a sip of it.

“They really need to stop using NesCafé,” Rosemary muttered, glaring down at her own cup as they stepped back out the doors of the cafeteria building. “Is a proper brewed cup of coffee too much to ask?” She gestured back at the building behind them. “There are a couple of different athletic facilities in that same building, by the way. The pool is outdoors, though; it’s usually warm enough in Florida to swim outside all year round. Not that I ever really have time to use either, of course. But I understand it’s all very nice, if exercising is your thing.”

“Mmh,” was the only comment Dmitri could come up with, so he took another sip of the terrible coffee.

“All fueled up?”

“Fueled…?”

Rosemary raised her own coffee cup in a salute. “Do you need a little more time for the caffeine to kick in, or shall we get started on that tour?”

“I do not think more time will help with that, given the source.”

“Ugh, tell me about it.” Rosemary accompanied this complaint with a theatrical eyeroll. “Well, let’s get on with it, then!”

Their first stop was close to the cafeteria. “Campus store,” Rosemary said, pointing at a small concrete block of a building and then rushing him onward. “Nothing exciting, but it’ll get you the basics. Right now you’re not allowed off-campus without an escort—not that you’re considered a flight risk or anything, but you’ll have enough to adjust to, what with living in a new country and starting a new job, and we’d rather someone keep an eye on you. One of the other scientists will do, or I can have my assistant go with you; Charles lives off campus anyway, and he knows the local area better than those of us who spend all our time locked up in the lab complex.”

As she told him this, she turned down an avenue of trees, all of which looked remarkably lively considering it was mid-January. Florida really did seem like it was on an entirely different planet than St. Petersburg, than all of Russia. The avenue eventually widened out, revealing a large gleaming building, looking rather like a cross between a skyscraper and an airplane hangar. “Most of the training for our space missions goes on in there,” Rosemary said. “Come on around; there’s a geodesic dome on the other side that I always love looking at.” She dragged him around the building to see it, and then they moved onwards once again.

Dmitri lost track of the buildings Rosemary dragged him past, each with their own design, engineering, aerospace, administration and financials, event and office space, an on-site hospital. Rosemary swept him through a brief tour of the hospital, and Dmitri wondered why until they rounded up with a locked wing that her keycard let them into. “Human testing,” she said, after the door shut behind them.

“Who has access?”

“The scientists who currently have need of this wing and a small crew of very trustworthy caretakers.” Rosemary’s voice was low, and a little sad. It was clear that she accepted the need for such testing, but he also thought that she did not exactly approve of it. And then she turned her head to flash a brilliant smile at him, and he thought that perhaps he had just imagined the sadness.

“Up to one more stop before I show you the labs?”

Dmitri nodded.

The smile turned into a mischievous grin. “Then let’s take you to the archives.”

“The archives?”

“Mm-hm.” Rosemary tucked her hand through his elbow and lead him back out of the hospital, a wicked little grin still on her face.

“Somehow I suspect that this is not so simple a task as looking at a room full of boxes of papers.”

“Well, of course not. If you want to look at boxes full of papers, you have to get through Adriane first.”

“Adriane?”

“The head archivist. You won’t be dealing with her often, but she’s the only one who can give you access to some of the high-clearance materials, and life will be easier if you start off on her good side. Not that anyone ever stays there for long.”

“This Adriane is an ogre, then?” Dmitri offered up as a dry attempt at a joke. It made Rosemary laugh, at least, and that had certainly been his intention.

“Not the worst thing I’ve heard a scientist call her by far. Probably safer than swearing at her, which is what most folks around here resort to when they think she’s withholding something they need or redacting something she shouldn’t. But cussing’s a month-long ban from the archives, which means no access to high-clearance materials at all.”

“I will keep that in mind.” Dmitri frowned. He had not been paying much attention to their surroundings, but even still, it seemed as if the paths they had been traveling down for the past few minutes were even more confusing than the rest of the campus had been, nearly overgrown, all narrow and twisting and crossing back on themselves. And then, suddenly, unexpectedly, the way opened up before them. and he found himself facing a small, blocky building, almost a concrete bunker of sorts, with narrow windows that were few and far between.

The front door opened into an anteroom with a rush of cool, humidity-controlled air, and Dmitri took a deep breath, glad to get air in his lungs that wasn’t thick and swampy. Even the hospital had retained some of the humidity of the outdoors, but the air in this building felt as if it had been sucked dry of all moisture.

Rosemary lead him through a door on the left side of the anteroom and up a set of stairs to the second floor, down a hall, and through yet another door. The entire building was shrouded in a mechanical silence, the only noises the hum of the lights and the low rush of the air conditioning units that must be keeping everything at the proper temperature and humidity, and the tap of their shoes on the linoleum echoed loudly in it.

The door Rosemary had opened revealed a reading room, more sterile than cozy. A small amount of light filtered through a few of the narrow windows along one wall, but the rest of the lighting was bright florescent bulbs, both overhead and at individual workstations that were fitted out with lamps. Small doors lined the walls, presumably leading elsewhere in the building, or to individual reading rooms.

“Adriane in, Florence?” Rosemary called softly to the young woman who was sitting at what appeared to be a reference desk of sorts, sorting carefully through a pile of paper with white-gloved hands.

The young woman Dmitri took to be Florence grimaced. “Well, Miss Epps, she went into her office half an hour ago saying she wasn’t to be disturbed.”

This dire pronouncement did not seem to daunt Rosemary in the slightest. “I’ll just pop my head in and see how she’s doing.”

“Your funeral,” Florence said, turning back to her papers with raised eyebrows.

“Well, she hasn’t murdered me yet,” said Rosemary, the volume of her voice going up a bit as she headed towards one of the doors next to the reference desk. Dmitri followed, getting close enough to see that it had a brass nameplate with the name and title “Dr. Adriane Dolmetsch, Head Archivist” inscribed on it. Rosemary knocked briskly at the door and then opened it, sticking her head into the room. “Yoo-hoo, Adriane! _Wie gehts, mein Schatz_?”

“What do you want this time, Rosmarin?” an even-toned female voice responded, muffled slightly by the door.

“Marya’s arrived. I thought I’d introduce the two of you.”

Before Dmitri could even parse that sentence well enough to react to being called Marya, the door opened. “Very well. Let us see who has come to this place, intending to shackle death.”

A tall, raw-boned woman with dark brown hair going to grey and piercing grey eyes emerged from the office. She stared down at Dmitri for a long moment that left him feeling as if she had peeled back his skin in order to get a good look at what really made him tick, the pressure of her gaze so intense that Dmitri sighed with relief when she turned her attention to Rosemary.

“He is not as impressive as I was expecting him to be.”

“No one is,” said Rosemary drily. “Dr. Kelley, Dr. Adriane Dolmetsch, head archivist. Adriane, Dr. Karl Kelley, virology and radiology.” Rosemary turned to the taller woman and thrust a finger at her. “I want you to play nice with him for a few weeks, Adriane.”

Adriane waved a white-gloved hand in his direction and turned to go back into her office. “You know that I only play nice as long as they play nice with me, Rosmarin.”

“He promises to be a good boy. Don’t you, Dr. Kelley?” Rosemary shot him a sly little grin and a wink.

“Er. Yes,” Dmitri stammered out, finally finding his tongue.

Adriane paused in the doorway to her office to turn and stare at him again, and he felt a cold shiver travel down his spine. “Indeed,” she said, and then disappeared once more into her office.

“Well, that went well!” Rosemary said in a cheery voice. “Let’s get out of here before she decides she actually took a disgust of you and comes back out to sear your flesh from your bones.”

“I heard that,” Adriane called through her office door.

Rosemary laughed, and called back, “ _Bis später, liebschen!_ ”

“I am neither your treasure nor your little love, Rosmarin!” came the returning shout. From her perch behind the reference desk, Florence was eying Rosemary with barely-disguised distress. It was clear that Rosemary took liberties with Adriane that no one else would dare.

Rosemary took Dmitri by the elbow, leading him out of the reading room. “Well. I think that went well,” she said as she shut the door behind them.

Dmitri, on the other hand, was feeling somewhat wrung-out by the encounter. And it had been an encounter—there were no other words for the experience of meeting the head archivist. “She seems, ah…”

“Nice?”

“The word I was looking for is terrifying.”

“Well, that too.” They had made it out of the building by then and Rosemary took off down one of the paths, towing him along in her wake. “The key is to treat her with respect.”

“I am not entirely certain we have the same definition of the word respect.”

“Well, there’s you, and then there’s me.” Rosemary slowed long enough for him to catch up to her side and grinned up at him. “See, she’s not allowed to ban _me_ from the archives.”


	4. Transcript: Interview, Adriane Dolmetsch

**TRANSCRIPT TAKEN FROM THE FILE OF ADRIANE DOLMETSCH**

**DATE:** November 4th, 1974, from 1:30 PM to 1:47 PM

 **LOCATION:** Goddard Futuristics

**PARTICIPANTS:**

Arthur KELLER, head of Communications at Goddard Futuristics

Adriane DOLMETSCH, Assistant Archivist of the Corporate Archives at Goddard Futuristics

**[RECORDING STARTS]**

**KELLER:** Miss Dolmetsch. Welcome.

 **DOLMETSCH:** Doctor.

 **KELLER:** I beg pardon?

 **DOLMETSCH:** I have a doctorate. You will address me as Dr. Dolmetsch or you will not address me at all.

**[LONG PAUSE]**

**KELLER:** I see. **[PAUSE]** Well, Dr. Dolmetsch, I assume you know why I've called you here today?

 **DOLMETSCH:** I have theories. I am not certain. Perhaps you could tell me which of my theories are correct.

 **KELLER:** Do tell.

 **DOLMETSCH:** I would hope that you intend to announce the modernization of the archives. There really is no reason to rely on physical finding aids any more, not when a computer can do it better and more securely.

 **KELLER:** Ah, yes, I did want to talk to you about—

 **DOLMETSCH: [INTERRUPTING]** But I suspect what you really wanted to be sure of, Matthew Newman, is whether or not I intend to give your renewed presence at this company away.

**[LONG PAUSE]**

**KELLER:** What did you say?

 **DOLMETSCH:** Your name. Matthew Newman.

**[LONG PAUSE]**

**KELLER:** I’m afraid that you’ve mistaken me for someone else.

 **DOLMETSCH:** You have changed your face. You have changed nothing else.

**[LONG PAUSE. THE SOUND OF A CHAIR CREAKING.]**

**KELLER:** Whatever similarities you think I have to this Matthew Newman character, you must be mis—

 **DOLMETSCH: [INTERRUPTING]** I see you have made good use of the lists I gave you.

**[LONG PAUSE]**

**KELLER:** Yes, I have. **[PAUSE]** What is it you want, Adriane? **[PAUSE]** Dr. Dolmetsch?

 **DOLMETSCH:** An archive that is ahead of it’s time.

 **KELLER:** That’s all?

 **DOLMETSCH:** Knowledge is power. It must be carefully curated.

 **KELLER:** And what about knowledge that could cause harm?

 **DOLMETSCH:** It can be made to disappear. Until it is needed, of course.

 **KELLER:** And you would do this for me?

 **DOLMETSCH:** For you? No. For this company…

 **KELLER:** I am this company.

 **DOLMETSCH:** Not yet, Mr. Keller. Not yet.

 **KELLER:** I see. And if I make this company mine? If I give you what you want?

 **DOLMETSCH:** That depends on where you wish to take it.

 **KELLER:** Don’t you know?

**[PAUSE]**

**DOLMETSCH:** I expect I do.

 **KELLER:** And is that satisfactory?

 **DOLMETSCH:** For now.

[RECORDING ENDS]


	5. A Tour, Part 2

**January 20th, 1989, 11:23 AM**

Rosemary paused and took a longer look up at Dmitri. “Oh, poor duckling, you’re all done in, aren’t you? I was planning on the labs next, but I’d better take you back to your apartment.”

Dmitri opened his mouth, intending to protest that he was fine, but the truth was that the morning had worn on him. Not just the archivist, though she had been a large part of it. But the heat and humidity, the air that seemed to cling to his lungs with each breath, that weighed down on his shoulders and left him sweating into his clothing…

Rosemary studied him a moment longer, and then nodded, short and decisive. “Right. This way, then.”

If asked to re-trace his steps, he did not think he would have been able to, but in a bare five minutes or so they emerged back into the parking lot in front of the apartment complex. Rosemary stayed at his side, opening the door to the complex for him, leading him down the hall to his apartment. When he unlocked the door to his apartment, she frowned.

“You haven’t got the air conditioning on.” Without waiting for an answer, she bustled past him into the apartment, and a few seconds later he heard the click and whirr as cool air started coming from the vents. She peeked around the corner from the living room at him. “That’s better. Do you need lunch? There are sandwich ingredients in the fridge, or I could bring you something from the cafeteria.”

“I… uh…” Dmitri didn’t know how to respond, either to her questions or to her invasion of his apartment. Not that it felt like his apartment yet.

“Or perhaps you’d like me to get out of your hair so that you can go back to sleep,” she said, passing him again on her way to the door and stepping out into the hall. “I can take a hint. I’ll bring you dinner?”

“Out of my hair.” Dmitri raised a dubious eyebrow, glancing upwards.

Rosemary laughed—an amused laugh, but not an unkind one. “All right, perhaps not the most appropriate turn of phrase for you. But I’m sure you understand the spirit of it. Dinner?”

Dmitri realized, suddenly, that this woman was not going to leave until she had some confirmation that he planned to feed himself. “Thank you. And I will make sandwich.”

There was another of those blinding smiles, just as startling now as the first time he had seen this woman smile. “You'd better,” she said, and then, with a little wave, she whirled away and was gone.

Dmitri shook his head as he shut and locked the door. A strange, strange woman.

She was right, though. He should eat something. He made for the kitchen, finding the light switch with a little less fumbling this time. The refrigerator was almost as large as the one in his lab back in Russia had been, a conspicuous waste of power and space for an individual.

Even with the air conditioning steadily lowering the temperature and humidity in the apartment, he found himself basking in the rush of cold air when he opened the refrigerator door. Still not like home, but closer.

He found bread and butter, meat and cheese, a head of lettuce pulled out of a drawer that contained more fresh greens and vegetables than he had seen in one place in months. He wondered whether he would be able to eat it all before it started to rot.

But perhaps that was the point. A demonstration of the fact that it did not matter whether or not the produce squared away in his refrigerator went bad, because there would always be more. A display of plenty, meant to remind him how different his life was now than the one he had left behind.

Or perhaps they were just vegetables.

The bread was soft and spongy, and spreading the cold butter—and oh, there was butter, a whole half-pound just for him—without pushing holes through the bread was difficult. The resulting sandwich was familiar and wrong all at once, the flavors slightly off, the textures just strange enough to be off-putting, but he forced it down, rinsed the knife and the plate he had found in one of the cabinets, and found himself at a loss. He was tired, but reluctant to let himself sleep; sleeping now would make it harder to adjust to local time.

He wasted half an hour opening cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, taking mental note of their contents, many of which were very peculiar indeed; prepackaged food in America came in a much greater variety than he was used to. A week’s worth of dishes were in the cabinet, a week’s worth of silverware in the drawer that still had Rosemary’s note stuck to it. Another drawer disgorged instruction manuals for the coffee machine and microwave, and he wasted another fifteen minutes or so studying them and putting a pot of coffee on to brew. Perhaps caffeine would help.

He poured sugar and cream into the resulting cup of coffee, just because both were available in quantity. No need to ration here. The resulting concoction was sickly sweet and thick on his tongue and delicious for it.

Dmitri wandered in to the living room, mug in hand, and noticed the pile of papers on the small side table. There. Re-reading his contract and the associated paperwork would keep him too busy to nap. He sat down on the couch next to the table and set his mug there, then pulled the pile of paperwork into his lap.

The next thing he knew, a gentle hand was shaking him awake.

“You really shouldn’t sleep upright like this, Dr. Kelley. You’ll get an awful crick in your neck.” Rosemary’s voice was low and amused.

“Mrgh?” was all Dmitri was able to manage at first, followed by a mumbled “Door locked…”

“I’ve got the spare set of keys on loan from the super until you get settled in, and you didn’t answer my knock,” she said, scooping the papers off of his lap and straightening them before placing them back on the side table. “How did you think I got in here with breakfast?” She picked up the mug next, though a glance at the side table revealed she had placed a glass of water there to take its place.

“Ah.” Dmitri removed his glasses and rubbed a hand over his face, feeling groggy. “What time…?”

“Almost eight. Ready for some dinner?”

His stomach growled in response.

“I’ll take that as a yes. It’s in the kitchen. In the fridge.” Rosemary went that direction herself, and Dmitri heard the sound of the sink running before she popped her head back out of the kitchen. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” she said. “Eight, eight-thirty at the latest. I want to take you through the labs and talk about your research a bit.” And then her back was to him, her hand on the knob of the front door of the apartment, obviously planning to leave him alone again, only he thought he would not be able to bear the silence of the apartment once she was gone.

“Wait.”

She paused and looked back over her shoulder at him. “Hm?”

“You have eaten?”

“Yes.”

“Never mind.”

“You want company?”

Dmitri opened his mouth and tried to say yes, but instead he shook his head. “No. I simply…”

Rosemary nodded, as if she understood his hesitance. “It’s all very strange still, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Eat. Sleep some more. Routine will help.”

“I know.”

“And if you need to talk…” Rosemary had turned, and shrugged now, a small shrug that was almost a shudder. “I know how Mr. Carter operates. And I’ve heard enough of the details... Just let me know. If you need someone to listen.”

Dmitri took in a sharp, jerky breath. He had been avoiding thinking about the way he had arrived here, but the image of that man who had looked like him was still seared into his mind. He had never really faced his own mortality before, not in such an immediate way; even in Volgograd, he had known that any death coming for him would be slow and lingering. “Thank you,” he forced out, feeling her offer needed some response.

Rosemary nodded again, and then she whirled back around and was gone from his apartment, shutting and locking the door behind her. Dmitri sat on the couch, breathing deeply, shoving down the panic that had locked his limbs in place. Eventually, he relaxed, and was able to pick the glass of water up and drink the entire thing down, was able to stand, was able to go to the kitchen and find the styrofoam container Rosemary had stashed in his refrigerator. He dumped the contents—pasta, with a rich, garlicky sauce and assorted bits of seafood covering it and some kind of cooked greens on the side—onto a plate, and then put his earlier perusal of the microwave’s manual to good use.

He ate dinner without really tasting it, and when he was done, he was too tired to do much more than set the plate and his silverware in the bottom of the sink, along with the glass he had drained a second time while eating.

And then he went to the bedroom, stripped down to his underwear, and collapsed on the bed.

**January 21st, 1989, 5:46 AM**

He woke early again. This time, when he finished showering, there was no breakfast waiting for him; instead, he made a pot of coffee and found more of the peculiar granola bars from the other morning.

He considered cooking, for just a moment; the overabundant refrigerator contained eggs and sausage, and he could have made himself a breakfast just as excessive as the one that Rosemary had provided for him the previous day. But he decided his time would be better spent reading through the paperwork he had attempted the night before.

“Karl.” He read the name off of the paperwork, trying it out. It felt strange on his tongue. Not a Russian name.

But then, neither was Kelley.

He wondered if that meant he was supposed to pretend he was not what he was. Any person with more than a passing knowledge of accents would realize he was Russian in an instant, change of name or no; maintaining the fiction that he wasn't would take much more than that.

Even so, it was enough to leave him feeling unsettled and not what he was.

Karl.

He sighed. He would try.

The copy of his contract was more or less the same as described to him by Mr. Cutter’s assistant on the plane; there were a few places where his knowledge of the intricacies of the English language failed him, but those were not the parts of the contract that concerned him.

The rest of the paperwork was uniformly uninformative. He had been hoping for a campus map so that he could make some sense of the winding paths that Rosemary had dragged him down the day before; they had become a nightmarish blur in his memory, combined and confused by the exhaustion and terror that had been fogging his mind since he had made the choice to take Mr. Carter’s offer. But it was obvious that no such thing would be at his disposal.

He reached the bottom of the stack and frowned. A large white envelope he did not remember seeing before had joined the stack; it had the word “bonus” written on it in the sprawling handwriting he was coming to recognize as Rosemary’s. He slit the envelope open and pulled out the sheet of paper it contained, starting to read.

A bare minute later, and the paper fell to the floor, dropped by fingers that were no longer responding to the impulses his brain was sending.

Well.

It was one thing to hear Rosemary tell him that Dmitri Vologin was dead.

It was quite another to see it written in black and white, in neat Cyrillic, on an internal party memo.

Somehow, they had pinned it on Kinski. From the sound of things, Comrade Kinski no longer had the privileged position with the party that he had held only a few days before.

There was no mention of Kostya. Dmitri did not know whether he should consider that a hopeful sign or not.

There was a sound that was not a sound as all the tension in his body released at once, and Dmitri fell forward, his torso slumping over his knees. He sat there, bent in half, head between his knees, taking deep, careful breaths, completely unaware of how much time passed as he tried to regain control of himself.

It was a knock at the door to his apartment that finally roused him, and at the second knock he was able to sit up straight, at the third to call out that he was on his way.

Rosemary’s smile turned into a frown the instant the door opened wide enough for her to get a look at his face. “Goodness. Maybe I ought to give you another hour or two.”

Dmitri— _Karl_ , he reminded himself—shook his head. “Please,” he begged, his voice feeling as if it were being ripped from his throat. “Please. I need…”

“A distraction? Or perhaps an occupation,” Rosemary suggested.

He nodded. “Both. I want to get back to my work.”

“Monday,” Rosemary promised. “They're still processing the samples you brought, but everything will be all set by Monday. And I’ll make sure you have plenty to occupy you until then.”

Dmitri— _Karl_ —nodded, not trusting his voice any further than it had already been pushed.

“Now,” Rosemary said, clapping her hands together. “I smell coffee, but that doesn't mean you’ve had breakfast. How about we head on over to the cafeteria to find you something to eat?”

Karl found himself smiling in spite of the panic that still thrummed in his veins.

The cafeteria was mostly empty, a circumstance Rosemary explained away with a nonchalant hand wave and a “Well, it’s Saturday, isn't it?” when he asked.

“You should not be looking after me on your weekend.”

Rosemary burst out laughing. “Oh, that's a good one. Weekends. Yes, I remember those. Not well, of course. It's been a decade or so.”

“That is joke, surely.”

“A really bad one that has just a little too much truth in it for real humor, to be honest.” Rosemary shrugged. “My schedule is erratic and entirely dependent on the needs of my scientists. I take time off when I can get it.” She paused and glanced up at him, almost shyly. “You're one of my scientists. And right now you need me.”

She said it in a forthright way, as if stating the obvious, leaving Dmi— _Karl,_ he thought hard at himself—no more room to protest.

And he did need her. He suspected that if he had been left alone in his apartment since he had arrived, if she had not been pulling him out to tour the campus, to take an interest in his surroundings, he would have been reduced to screaming fits by this point.

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome. Now, how about breakfast?”

Rosemary seemed just as ravenous as Karl was himself, and he found himself studying her more closely. He had thought the lack of breakfast in his apartment this morning was due to the fact that she had set a time to come and get him, but a careful look at her face revealed dark circles and tired wrinkles that were not entirely concealed by her makeup.

“Something on my face?”

Karl shook his head. “No. Simply wondering if I am only scientist who has had need of you this morning. You look tired.”

To his surprise, she blushed at that. “I've got someone settling in for a two-day observation cycle under quarantine,” she said, her voice brisk, in direct contradiction to the blush. “Dr. Weiss. You'll meet him later.”

“Ah.” Karl returned his attention to his breakfast. Perhaps she had some other relationship with this Dr. Weiss, beyond being his lab manager.

Or perhaps she was just unused to someone wondering how she was.

The latter, he decided, as she remained brisk and detached for the rest of breakfast and the walk to a large, gleaming glass building.

“This wing is primarily biochem research,” she said, gesturing at the entrance she had lead them to. “But there’s radiology and theoretical physics and computational analysis and all sorts of other specialists packed into the other wings, so you'll have plenty of colleagues to bounce ideas off of once you get to know one another.”

Karl glanced upwards, completely overwhelmed. He thought that the lab complex could have held the building that his old lab had been in twenty or thirty times over and still had room to spare. It sprawled and doubled back on itself, five stories of gleaming steel and bulletproof glass. “Not that we get many stray bullets around here,” Rosemary added after telling him about that particular property of the windows, “but you can’t imagine the sort of stuff that gets flung through the air during hurricane season.”

Karl wondered what number of stray bullets counted as many; Rosemary’s tone had suggested that it was non-zero, which was more than a little alarming.

Rosemary seemed unaware of his distress as she opened the door with her key card and shooed him inside. “In general, the higher or lower you go, the more security you’ll encounter. Anyone who can get into the complex can get to the first floor, so it’s mostly nonessentials, storage of less volatile materials, some admin space, meeting rooms, a full kitchen and a lounge, that sort of thing,” Rosemary lead him down a first floor hallway, and Karl peered down the side passages curiously as they passed by. “Chances are, you won’t spend much time here, but this is where most of your requisitions will come from.”

She used her keycard on a door that opened on to a set of stairs, and paused on the landing once the door shut behind them. “Now, your card will get you to any floor in this place, though I'd suggest you stay away from the subbasement level unless you've been invited by Dr. Pryce. She doesn't like unexpected visitors.”

Karl had heard of Dr. Pryce, but only by reputation, and even then only in the form of the rumors which abounded about the reclusive scientist. He was not one to give much account to rumors, but some of the ones about Pryce had been so outlandish that he was just a little bit curious.

“I imagine you will, however, be spending at least some of your time in the basement, since that's where all our lovely radioactive isotopes are, all nice and safe in even more lovely lead-lined rooms.”

“And up?”

“Second floor is admin offices, at least in this wing. Some of the other departments mix it up a bit. Three through five are labs. My group is the fifth floor.”

Karl eyed the stairs with a bit of trepidation, and then started as Rosemary placed a gentle hand on his arm.

“We don't have to trek up there just yet. If you'd rather, we can stop off at my office for the interrogation.”

Her voice was light and humorous, and Karl thought the mention of an interrogation was just her teasing him… but just at the moment, he preferred the stairs to anything that required him to spend much time talking. “I will manage. I would like to see my lab.”

Rosemary grinned and started up the stairs at her usual energetic pace. Karl sighed and tried to keep up with her, but by the time they reached the fifth floor, he was half a flight behind her. Not that the view was entirely objectionable... though he did have to snap his gaze down to the stairs in front of him quickly enough to make himself dizzy when she reached the landing and turned to watch him. If she had noticed him staring, she was at least discreet enough to make no mention of it when he caught up with her. “Do you have your keycard?”

Karl fumbled in his pockets. These were the same trousers he had been wearing the day before, so the keycard must… ah. There it was. It had come unstuck from the paper it had been attached to and had fallen to the bottom of his pocket.

It worked. Well, of course it did. These were not the sort of people to overlook details.

“Your keycard must work on this door as well,” he said as Rosemary lead him down the hall that had been beyond the door.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Well, yes, of course it does. But I realized that we probably ought to make sure it's properly set up with all the permissions you'll need.” She came to a halt again, just beyond a door with‘Dr. Kelley’ written on the nameplate, leaving plenty of room for him to approach and use his keycard once more. The door let out a little beep as it unlocked.

And then Karl opened the door onto a lab that could only have come from a dream.

Mr. Carter had told him that the lab they had waiting for him was top of the line, but this… he didn’t even know what some of the machines in this room did. The entire room gleamed in the light of the florescent bulbs overhead and the sunlight pouring in through the windows that weren’t blocked off by blackout curtains.

“This is…” he trailed off, not certain what words he was looking for.

“Fantastic, isn’t it? Carter gave me carte blanche, and I’m afraid I went a bit overboard.”

“Perhaps a bit overwhelming,” Karl admitted.

“Ah. Yes. I’ve seen photos of your old lab. Well…” Rosemary went across the room to a cabinet at the back and started opening drawers. “Manuals, here. And your lab techs have training in using most of the equipment in here, so they can give you a hand if you need it.” She paused and bit her lip, a brief nervous movement that caught his eye. “So do I, if their knowledge ever falls short.”

Karl nodded. “Thank you.”

Rosemary smiled one of her warm, brilliant smiles up at him and shut the drawers again. “Now, while we’re at this end of the lab… I do have a solution for feeling overwhelmed. Most of the equipment in here is state of the art, cutting edge sort of stuff, but it’s also true that sometimes a familiar tool can be a more efficient method of advancing research than a powerful one.” She pulled open a door to the side that he had assumed lead to a storage closet or something of the sort. “So here I’ve done my best to replicate your old lab, based on the intel our field researchers were able to get to me.” She gave him an apologetic look. “I’m afraid they didn’t quite get me all the model numbers, so I’ve had to do my best based on the photographs.”

Karl gaped at the room beyond the door, feeling displaced and unstuck from the world, as he had so often over the few short days since Mr. Carter had appeared in Dmitri Vologin’s apartment with that offer of his. As far as Karl could tell, it was an exact replica of his lab back in Russia, from the poky size of the room to the assortment of mostly old and mediocre equipment contained within. Even the single window that opened in to the room had been disguised to fit the dimensions of his memory. “You people certainly do not leave anything to chance,” he muttered.

Rosemary’s expression switched from apologetic to pleased in an instant, another of those blinding smiles transforming her face. “I’m so glad you like it.”

“Like… is perhaps not be the word I would use.”

She laughed. “Well, no, it’s terrible, isn’t it? Such a letdown after the main lab. I can’t think how you ever got anything done in here. But I promise you, the nostalgia factor has been very helpful for more than a few of our researchers, so I wanted to make sure you had the option as well.” She chivvied him back out into the main lab and shut the door on the dreary sight of his past.

At her brutal but honest assessment, Karl felt a sudden, irrational surge of fondness for his old lab. Rosemary laughed again, and he looked down at her quizzically.

“I just saw you mentally resolve to do all your best work in there, just to spite me,” she offered up as an explanation. “Good. Spite’s an excellent motivator.”

Karl frowned. “You are very strange woman.”

“Yes, well, I report directly to Mr. Carter. We all of us get a little odd after a year or two of that, and I’ve been at it for nearly fourteen.”

“Mr. Carter did not look old enough to have been in his position for so long.”

“Ah, well, I meant the Head of Communications in general,” she said airily, waving a dismissive hand in his direction. “The person in charge changes every five years or so. It’s always some hardass who uses over-the-top threats to get results, and they all sort of blur together after a while.”

“I… I see. Does that mean there are more Mr. Carters out there?” Karl felt his face stretch into an expression of exaggerated terror at the thought.

Rosemary flashed an amused smile at him. “None that you’ll encounter, thank goodness.”

She showed Karl to another door with a tiny office hiding behind it, more or less a closet large enough to hold a desk and a computer, keeping up a cheerful thread of narration the entire time. Karl let her words wash over him, taking in very little of the details, still overwhelmed.

“And you look like you could use another cup of coffee,” she finished. “And maybe a snack. Shall we head down to my office?”

“Thank you,” he managed, hoping his inattention had not been too obvious. He might have remained rooted in the world around him, had she not shown him that little side lab, but as it was…

Fortunately, Rosemary’s presence made it unnecessary to do much more than follow her wherever she lead him next. She herded him briskly back down to the second floor and, once there, straight down a short hall to the door directly at the end of it, which she unlocked with a set of keys that must have come from a pocket and seemed to have materialized out of thin air. He was ushered into a large office that still managed to feel crowded, what with the corner desk, one arm of which cut the room in half, the three chairs obviously meant for visitors, a pair of bookshelves bowing under the weight of innumerable reference volumes and stacks of scientific journals, and as many filing cabinets as could be crammed into the remaining space. Nothing personal, though. Not that he could see.

Rosemary sat him in one of the chairs and then popped back out of the office for a moment. When she returned, she bustled around to sit behind the desk, plopping down in the luxurious wheeled chair that was behind the desk.

“My assistant is taking care of the coffee, so let’s get started,” she said, disappearing behind the desk to, from the sound of things, dig something out of one of her drawers. She eventuallyset a file on the desk in front of her and tapped it to straighten out its contents before laying it flat and opening it to the first page.

“So. The Koschei Bessmertny virus.” Rosemary smiled, a mischievous grin. “Tell me all about how you plan to shackle death, Marya Morevna.”

Karl let out a startled burst of laughter.


	6. Transcript: Marya Morevna

**TRANSCRIPT TAKEN FROM THE FILE OF ROSEMARY EPPS**

**DATE:** January 18th, 1989, 6:10 AM-6:19 AM

 **LOCATION:** Goddard Futuristics, Corporate Archives, Office of the Head Archivist

**PARTICIPANTS:**

Rosemary EPPS, Head Lab Manager of the Biochem Research Division, Goddard Futuristics

Adriane DOLMETSCH, Head Archivist of the Corporate Archives Division at Goddard Futuristics

**[RECORDING STARTS]**

**EPPS:** Adriane, mein Herz, mein Schatz, mein Liebchen.

 **DOLMETSCH:** What do you want, Rosmarin?

 **EPPS:** Who says I want something? Maybe I'm just here for the pleasure of your company.

 **DOLMETSCH:** Yes, I am certain this is a social call, as it is six in the morning and you have not brought me coffee. **[PAUSE]** You only call me your treasure when you want something. So. What is it?

 **EPPS:** You're saying I have a tell? How very sloppy of me.

 **DOLMETSCH:** Rosmarin.

 **EPPS:** Oh, fine, I'll get to the point. The Vologin project is a go. Months of work and research and very, very difficult acquisitions—you wouldn't believe some of the instruments his old lab had, completely out-of-date—

 **DOLMETSCH: [INTERJECTING]** No, I would not believe.

 **EPPS:** —but finally, FINALLY, the offer has been made, and they’re on a plane now, and I'll have a full lab again sometime tomorrow.

 **DOLMETSCH:** I imagine it will take some time to recover from the jet lag.

 **EPPS:** Well, yes, I suppose we can give him a day or so until he needs to be fully operational.

**[PAUSE]**

**DOLMETSCH:** And so you are merely here to waste my time?

EPPS: Oh, no! Thank you for reminding me. Carter finally found out what Vologin's been calling the retrovirus, but I think I'm not getting a reference somewhere. Russian literature's not my strong suit. You know anything about someone named, oh, what was it. Koschei Bessmertnyy?

 **DOLMETSCH:** Remind me, what goal is this retrovirus meant to achieve?

 **EPPS:** I believe he's aiming for something that will induce general regenerative abilities. Increased strength, increased resistance to other maladies, that sort of thing. **[SHORT LAUGH]** Honestly, sounds to me like he's trying to cure the human condition, but it's not that easy to defeat death.

**DOLMETSCH: [MUFFLED LAUGHTER]**

**EPPS:** Adriane?

 **DOLMETSCH: [BREATHLESS]** The door.

**[SOUND OF DOOR SHUTTING]**

**DOLMETSCH: [HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER, NO LONGER MUFFLED]**

**EPPS:** Good lord. Do I want to know what caused that reaction?

 **DOLMETSCH:** It is simply that we should have made his new alias some variant of Marya Morevna.

 **EPPS:** Okay, yes, I do need to know. Explain, Adriane.

 **DOLMETSCH:** It is a Russian fairy tale. Koschei Bessmertnyy, also known as Koschei the Deathless, is an immortal sorcerer who removed his death from his body. He hid it inside a needle, inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare, inside an iron chest and buried it under an oak tree on a far-off island. And for as long as his death remains safe, he cannot be killed.

 **EPPS:** I see. I think I read that story when I was a child. It’s in one of the Lang books, isn't it?

 **DOLMETSCH:** I would not know.

 **EPPS:** And Marya Morevna... oh. Oh. I remember. Oh, we really should have named him after her, shouldn't we. **[LAUGHTER]** Well, he'll no doubt need a new alias at some point. Most of the folks who work with human subjects do. Let's say the two of us sit down right now and come up with something good, hm?

 **DOLMETSCH:** I have a half hour I can spare.

**[TRANSCRIPT OF RECORDING CONTINUES IN FILE OF DMITRI VOLOGIN]**


	7. An Interrogation

**January 21st, 1989, 10:42 AM**

Karl frowned across the desk at Rosemary. “Where should I start?”

“Where else? The beginning. You’ve been working on Koschei Bessmertnyy for what, a bit over a year now?”

Karl nodded. “Yes.”

“But that’s just when the party started giving you some funding for it. So how long have you been working on it unofficially?”

Karl started. “I… I do not know what you are implying.”

Rosemary laughed. “I’m not some party official looking to get you in trouble for wasting resources on something non-essential, Dr. Kelley. You can be honest with me.”

Hopefully honesty would not be a mistake. He had no doubt that this company had internal politics almost as complicated as the ones he had become used to navigating back in Russia, but as of yet he was in complete ignorance of them. “This incarnation of it? Nearly a decade. But before then…” He swallowed, hard. Should he admit the truth? “This is my life’s work. This is…”

A knock on the door interrupted him before he could confess to more, and a young, light-skinned Black man in a very nice suit entered Rosemary’s office, carrying a tray that he unloaded onto Rosemary’s desk. There was a carafe of coffee and cups to go with it, plentiful cream and sugar, and a plate of golden-brown shortbread cookies. Karl, who had been trying to overcome the vague, floating feeling the tour of the lab had left him with, fell on this offering with a will.

Rosemary sat in silence as he drank down a cup of coffee and ate several cookies in quick succession. “Feeling better now?” she asked as he poured himself a second cup.

“Yes.”

“Ready to get going again?”

“Yes.” Karl pretended he had not let slip how much his work on Koschei Bessmertnyy mattered to him, and Rosemary did not force a return to the subject. She listened intently as he covered the history of his work, making the occasional note on various pages of the file in front of her in a sprawling left-handed script. From time to time she prompted him with questions that reminded him he had forgotten a detail, but for the most part she sat there quietly, taking it all in, along with several cups of coffee.

Rosemary took her coffee black, but she apparently still had a taste for sweets, and Karl found himself fighting her for a fair share of the remaining cookies. She shot him one of those startling bright smiles of hers as he reached for the last one and, while he was gaping at her, overwhelmed, she snagged it for herself.

“Not fair.”

“These are my favorite and I will fight dirty for them if I must. Now, you were saying about the progression in rats?”

Karl was not entirely certain how long it took him to spill out all the details of his research so far—there was a clock ticking away on Rosemary’s desk, but it faced away from him—but by the time he was done, the remaining coffee in the carafe had gone cold. Karl poured out the dregs for himself, along with the remaining sugar and cream; he needed the fortification.

Rosemary glanced down at the file in front of her, ruffling the pages back to the first one, and then looked back up at him with raised eyebrows, a frown turning the corners of her mouth down. “Is that really everything?”

Karl hastily swallowed the swig of coffee he had just taken. “What do you mean?”

“Well…” Rosemary set her pen down, then glanced at the top sheet of the file again and launched into a series of questions. At first he found them simple to answer, this thing or that, small issues he had forgotten to bring up during his explanation of his research, but after the first half-dozen or so he started stumbling after answers, or needed to take a minute or two to come up with one, or had no answer at all for her and the sudden realization that there were a whole host of other questions that he should have been asking himself all along.

The coffee and the shortbread were a long-ago memory by the time Rosemary ran out of questions, and Karl found himself feeling as if his brain had been run through several of the more complicated and unfamiliar looking of the bits of machinery waiting for him up in his lab.

“Thought you said interrogation was only a joke. KGB could learn a thing or two from you.” Karl slumped back in his chair, shutting his eyes. He rubbed his forehead with one hand, trying to ease the headache he had suddenly become aware of.

Rosemary laughed. “Why, Dr. Kelley, what a compliment to give a girl. I’ll get a swollen head at this rate.” Her tone of voice was mocking, mostly of herself, but he thought he heard some real pride underneath the self-deprecation.

He peered around his arm. “Swollen… head?” He thought he knew what she meant, but wanted to be sure… and he wanted to be sure of the pride as well.

“I’ll hold myself in higher esteem than I deserve,” she said.

The smile on her face glowed, and Karl realized, suddenly, that every smile she had used so far had been a weapon, but this smile… this smile was real, and he could not help but smile back. “Ah, well, if you will not hold yourself in high esteem, allow me to do so for you. You ask remarkable questions.” He paused, considering. “Intelligent questions. Questions that get at core of process. I have learned things about my own research that I did not know until you started your interrogation.” And despite the headache, his fingers were itching to take notes of his own. “You would not happen to have pad of paper and pen? I would like to write down ideas before they disappear.”

Rosemary nodded and pulled a legal pad and a ballpoint pen out of a desk drawer, handing them both to Karl. He snatched them out of her hands, eager to get his thoughts down on paper before they slipped away.

Rosemary must have left the room at some point to fetch something more for them to eat, though he did not notice her leave. His only awareness of it came when he found himself attempting to eat the wrapper of what he suspected had been another one of those peculiar granola bars. Before he could react properly to this, Rosemary plucked the wrapper out of his hand and replaced it with an open water bottle.

“And here,” she said, setting an open pill bottle on the desk. “Ibuprofen. For the headache.”

Karl had gathered by then that Rosemary was observant, but he had not expected her to notice his headache.

Perhaps she had also noticed him staring at her backside as they had climbed the stairs. A truly mortifying thought.

He set the water bottle down and picked up the pill bottle; examining the dosage and shaking the correct number of pills out distracted him handily from that unproductive train of thought, and drinking half the bottle of water in a single gulp washed the pills down, along with the remains of his mortification.

“Blyad, ya goloden,” he heard his own voice say, but before he could correct to English, Rosemary responded.

“Yes, I was thinking we ought to head back towards the cafeteria.”

“What time is it?”

Rosemary glanced down at the clock on her desk. “Nearly three.”

“My apologies for keeping you from your midday meal.”

Rosemary laughed. “In this case, I think it's the other way around. I was the one doing the interrogating, remember?”

“Still, I could have taken notes later…” And forgotten half of what he had managed to write down, most likely.

Rosemary seemed to be thinking the same thing; she shook her head. “I know how it is. You need to get the thoughts on paper before they disappear. And it’s been quite nice to take a break from the usual rush of my job. My Saturdays aren’t nearly this restful normally.”

“That was restful?”

“Well, I didn’t say it was meant to be restful for you,” Rosemary shot back, and there it was again, that real smile of hers, lighting up her face. “Shall we go investigate some lunch? We’ll come back here after for your notes.”

“By all means.” Karl stood, wincing as he stretched his arms over his head until his back popped.

“You’re taking the lead this time,” Rosemary said as she ushered him out of her office and locked the door behind him. She shot him a sly, sideways look, and he flinched. Oh. She _had_ noticed him staring. “I’ll start you with something easy. How do we get back to the first floor?” She sounded as if she were holding back a laugh, and he could not blame her. His face must be a picture of horrified realization at the moment.

Karl took a deep breath, pushing down his embarrassment, and made for the door at the end of the short hall that lead to the stairs. Together they made their way out of the lab building, though he got turned around on the first floor. Eventually he found the glass doors they had entered by… or at least, he hoped they were the glass doors they had entered by. Perhaps they had crossed into one of the other wings as he had wandered the first floor; nothing about their surroundings looked familiar at all when they exited the building.

“I think it is this way?” He pointed cautiously down the leftmost of the three paths that converged near the entrance.

Rosemary sighted along his arm and then reached up to nudge it towards the middle path instead.

“This way?”

She nodded. “I was going to ask. How are you holding up?”

Karl did not know how to answer, but it seemed his silence was answer enough for Rosemary.

“That good, huh?”

They paused at a fork in the path, and Karl pointed, then he started down the path he had indicated when Rosemary nodded. She followed a half step behind and to his side, silent and contemplative.

“I was worried this morning,” she broke the silence to say after they had encountered the next intersection and moved on. “I thought it might have been too soon for your first bonus.”

“Bonus?”

“The memo. On Kinski.”

“Ah.” Karl frowned, focusing on that part of the memo, and not the disturbing content of the rest of it. “Feh. He will no doubt be back in his old position within the month.”

“We could have him killed for you.”

Karl jerked to a halt and stared at Rosemary, appalled. She took a couple of steps past him before stopping and turning back towards him, one eyebrow raised inquisitively.

“You are serious.”

She let out an unconvincing crack of laughter. “Of course not.” There was a pause as they started moving again and negotiated another intersection. “He'd kill himself. He would find it… preferable to the alternative.”

Karl felt his breath catch in his throat. “That is not necessary.”

“Well, let me know if you change your mind. We’ve got a whole stable of trained assassins on call.” Rosemary’s tone of voice was teasing again, and he wondered if the entire conversation had been an elaborate joke. If so, it had been in very poor taste, and left him reluctant to answer any of the remaining conversational forays she shot his way on the rest of the walk.

When they finally arrived at the cafeteria, he had glanced back the way they had come, thinking that he might be able to make the return trip without Rosemary’s guidance. Now that he knew what building he was looking for, he could see that the lab complex was just tall enough to be seen over the tops of the trees that dotted the campus grounds between it and the cafeteria. In theory, choosing the paths that lead most directly that way from the options available would get him there.

The cafeteria was mostly empty, and the echoing silence of the large room left Karl reluctant to break his own silence. Rosemary seemed reluctant to attempt another conversation herself; aside from quietly thanking the worker behind the counter as she gathered up her food, she did not speak again until they left the building.

“This time I’m only going to give you a hint if you get us irrevocably lost. Now, which way back to the labs?”

Karl located the upper floor of the lab building over the tree line and set off decisively down the path that seemed most likely. Time to put his theory into action.

Fifteen minutes later, he had to admit that his theory was nonsense. Somehow, even though he had chosen a series of pathways in what he thought was the right direction, he had lost sight of the lab complex almost immediately. His choices had landed them instead at a picturesque little water feature: a series of small pools waterfalled their way down an artificial hillside and ended in a winding stream that disappeared into some flowering bushes.

Karl stared at the pools in consternation. “Why is the campus like this?”

“Deterrent to corporate espionage,” Rosemary responded. “Well, in a way. It’s hard to sneak in to the buildings around here if you can’t find them. And it’s pretty. Lots of nice little outdoor scenes to stare at while you sit and think.”

“I suppose so.” He paused, then looked at her. “Is that what you do, when you are not working?”

“Oh, goodness no. What on earth do I have to sit and think about? Such a waste of time when I could be _doing_ things. Like the filing.” The sarcasm in her voice was biting.

“I thought you said you had an assistant?”

“And he’s three clearance levels below me, poor dear, though he has picked up on a thing or two he’s not supposed to know about over the years.” There was a loud beep, and Rosemary pulled a pager out of her pocket, frowning as she read it. “Looks like there’s something high-priority waiting for me back at the lab. I’ll have to foist you off on my assistant once we get there. He’ll make sure you get back to the apartments in one piece.”

Karl was grateful; he was feeling drained and exhausted once again, and the meal they had eaten in the cafeteria was sitting heavily in his stomach. He rather suspected he would fall asleep again the instant he got back to his apartment.

“Think I’ll take the lead again, if that’s all right?”

“Yes, of course.” He followed along in her wake, noting that his mistake had come far, far sooner than he thought it had, given the amount of backtracking they needed to do. When they made it back to the lab building, Rosemary paused in the short hall that lead to her office at the door to a smaller but indisputably less crowded office. The young man who had brought the coffee stood up as they entered.

“What’s the emergency, Charles?”

“Dr. Pryce was looking for you. Something about the…” Charles trailed off, shooting Karl a dubious look.. “Well, you know.”

Rosemary sighed. “All right. If she calls again, let her know I’m on my way. Can you let Dr. Kelley into my office? He left some notes in there. And then I need you to get him back to the apartments. He hasn’t quite oriented himself yet.”

“Of course, Miss Epps. Good luck with Pryce.”

Rosemary let out a laugh that sounded forced. “Oh, Charlie my boy, you know _I_ don’t need luck with her. It’s the rest of the world that needs to watch out.” And then she was gone, and Karl was left with her assistant.

“Charles Lopez,” the young man said, holding his hand out to Karl. “And you’re Dr. Karl Kelley.”

Karl took the proffered hand cautiously, and tried not to wince from the strength of Charles’ grip. “Yes. I am pleased to meet you.”

“Shall we?” Charles gestured Karl out of his office and locked it behind them, then took him down the hall to retrieve his notes. Unlike Rosemary, Charles seemed reluctant to speak unless spoken to, and by the time Charles dropped Karl off in the parking lot of the apartment building with a brisk “Good evening, Dr. Kelley,” Karl was almost missing Rosemary and her garrulous ways.

For all his exhaustion, he found himself unable to sleep. Instead, he sat propped up in bed, reading over the notes he had taken and making more, letting his mind relax into the gentle ebb and flow of work, feeling, for the first time since he had come to this place, almost content.


	8. Transcript: Four Conversations

**TRANSCRIPT TAKEN FROM THE FILE OF ROSEMARY EPPS**

**DATE:** August 16th, 1976, from 2:15 PM to 2:18 PM

 **LOCATION:** Goddard Futuristics Lab Complex

**PARTICIPANTS:**

Miranda PRYCE, research scientist at Goddard Futuristics

Rosemary EPPS, lab manager at Goddard Futuristics

**[BEGIN RECORDING]**

**[SOUND OF KNOCK]**

**PRYCE:** Well? Come in.

 **EPPS:** Dr. Pryce?

 **PRYCE:** Oh. You again.

 **EPPS:** Me again.

 **PRYCE:** You know, I couldn't find a damn thing in here after the last time you left.

 **EPPS:** Seeing as I didn't move anything the last time I was in here, I'm not sure you can lay that one at my feet, Dr. Pryce.

 **PRYCE:** You could.

 **EPPS:** Ah.

 **PRYCE:** You told me when we met that you didn't know anything at all about the sort of work I do, but when I asked for a box of transistors… **[PRYCE TRAILS OFF]**

 **EPPS:** I've been doing some reading. And I did say you'd never have to tell me anything twice.

 **PRYCE:** I just didn't take it literally. **[PAUSE]** I don't need an assistant.

 **EPPS:** That's good. I'm not one.

 **PRYCE:** What are you, then?

 **EPPS:** Something much better. A lab manager.

 **PRYCE: [LAUGHTER]** Fine. I guess I have a lab manager now. Think you can make some sense of this mess?

 **EPPS:** I can certainly try.

**[END RECORDING]**

**TRANSCRIPT TAKEN FROM THE FILE OF MIRANDA PRYCE**

**DATE:** August 16th, 1976, from 5:06 PM to 5:13 PM

 **LOCATION:** Goddard Futuristics Communications Office

**PARTICIPANTS:**

Miranda PRYCE, research scientist at Goddard Futuristics

Arthur KELLER, head of Communications at Goddard Futuristics

**[BEGIN RECORDING]**

**PRYCE:** Arthur.

 **KELLER:** Miranda! So good of you to stop by. I see you've finally accepted my little gift.

 **PRYCE:** I have no idea what you're talking about.

 **KELLER:** Miss Epps. Rosemary. You're finally letting her do her job.

 **PRYCE:** You called her an assistant. That woman is no one’s assistant.

 **KELLER:** Well, no, she does like to take charge, doesn't she? We’ll have to keep an eye on her. Keep her on her toes.

 **PRYCE:** Yes.

 **KELLER:** Is that what changed your mind?

 **PRYCE:** No. **[PAUSE]** She doesn't stare, Arthur. She doesn't stare, and she doesn't treat me like a cripple.

 **KELLER:** And?

 **PRYCE:** And I know I'll come back to an impeccably organized lab, despite the fact that she claims to know nothing about computer engineering. Which is more than I can say for the assistants you gave me who did claim to know something about it.

 **KELLER:** They did know something about computer engineering. They had all been working in the field for quite some time.

 **PRYCE:** Which left them too high and mighty to do what actually needed to be done in my lab.

 **KELLER:** I did learn my lesson there, Miranda. No need to rub it in.

**[PAUSE]**

**PRYCE:** I’ll keep her busy for you.

 **KELLER:** Thank you.

**[END RECORDING]**

**TRANSCRIPT TAKEN FROM THE FILE OF ROSEMARY EPPS**

**DATE:** August 1st, 1977, 1:57 PM - 2:02 PM

 **LOCATION:** Goddard Futuristics Communications Office

**PARTICIPANTS:**

Rosemary EPPS, lab manager at Goddard Futuristics

Arthur KELLER, head of Communications at Goddard Futuristics

**[BEGIN RECORDING]**

**KELLER:** One more thing, Miss Epps. **[PAUSE]** Now where is it… Ah. Here we are.

 **EPPS:** And what is this, sir?

 **KELLER:** Call it a… bonus. For a good first year on the job.

 **EPPS:** I don’t recall a bonus structure being part of my contract. So I’d rather not take this until I know what sort of strings are attached. What do you want from me? More weekend hours? I’m afraid I’ll have to negotiate Goddard paying for a laundry service, if that’s the case.

 **KELLER: [LAUGHTER]** No strings attached at all. You’re the first person who had managed to work as Pryce’s lab manager for more than a few weeks without quitting in a huff. And on top of that, you’ve managed to increase the efficiency of your team of scientists by a good 10%.

 **EPPS:** So much?

 **KELLER:** Oh, yes. You’ve earned this.

 **EPPS:** What kind of bonus is it? Stock options?

 **KELLER:** Why don’t you open it and see?

**[LONG PAUSE]**

**EPPS:** This is…

 **KELLER:** Goddard takes care of its own, Rosemary. I take care of my own.

 **EPPS:** I understand, sir. **[PAUSE]** That can go in the the trash.

**[SOUND OF PAPER SHUFFLING, DOOR OPENING, DOOR CLOSING ONCE MORE]**

**EPPS: I** f you don’t mind me asking, sir… Do you know how he died?

 **KELLER:** I believe he committed suicide. Shot himself in the head. It turns out he could not weather the loss of his professional reputation nearly as well as you were able to, Rosemary.

 **EPPS:** Thank you, sir. Time for me to get back to work.

 **KELLER:** You always do.

**[END RECORDING]**

**TRANSCRIPT TAKEN FROM THE FILE OF ROSEMARY EPPS**

**DATE:** August 1st, 1977, 4:27 PM - 4:30 PM

 **LOCATION:** Goddard Futuristics Communications Office

**PARTICIPANTS:**

Miranda PRYCE, research scientist at Goddard Futuristics

Arthur KELLER, head of Communications at Goddard Futuristics

****[BEGIN RECORDING]** **

**PRYCE:** How did Rosemary like her bonus?

 **KELLER:** Oh, excessively. In fact, for a moment, I almost thought she was going to make a play for me.

 **PRYCE:** Were you tempted?

 **KELLER:** Oh, you know I leave that sort of thing to you young people these days.

 **PRYCE:** I’m sure you do.

 **KELLER:** I will admit that the thought was briefly intriguing. Al does seem to enjoy her… attributes.

**PRYCE: [SHORT LAUGH]**

**KELLER:** I’m sure, given your predilections, that you've noticed her particular charms yourself, Miranda, so don't pretend you haven't.

 **PRYCE:** All right, Arthur, she does have very nice tits, I'll give you that. But really, Al would be so disappointed if she got a go at you first.

 **KELLER:** Well, there is that. But no. Nothing more than a moment of intrigue. And as I'm more than satisfied with your companionship, Miranda, I certainly didn't consider anything beyond that.

 **PRYCE:** Glad to hear it.

**[END RECORDING]**


	9. Viktor

**January 22nd, 1989, 11:32 AM**

Dmitri woke to the sound of a ringing phone. He sat bolt-upright in bed and hauled himself out of it, stumbling through to the living room on auto-pilot and almost running into a wall along the way. That near miss woke him up properly, reminding him that he was no longer in St. Petersburg, that this was not the apartment whose dimensions had grown so familiar to him over the past few years.

The phone was still ringing, and not from somewhere in the living room. Dmitri stumbled to the kitchen next and found the device bolted to the wall, managing to lift the handset from the hook on his second try, answering it with a mumbled “ _Privyet_.”

“Hello to you too, Dr. Kelley.” Rosemary’s voice was appallingly cheerful, even over the phone. “Time for you to get yourself showered and put some pants on. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

Dmitri—no, he needed to remember, his name was Karl now—was in no mood for surprises. He had been up half the night working on a research plan meant to compensate for some of the weak points that Rosemary had so pointedly brought to light in his work so far on the Koschei Bessmertnyy virus; he fully intended to spend most of the day in bed to compensate for his lack of sleep the night before, and told her so.

“Too bad. You’ve got fifteen minutes.” There was a click, and she hung up.

Karl considered ignoring her and just going back to bed, but he would not put it beyond the woman to come invade his privacy and haul him forcibly out of bed, and she did not seem the type to be put off by him being in a state of undress. So instead he showered quickly and put on clean clothing, pausing for a minute to transfer the contents of his trouser pockets to the fresh pair. Usually he would be able to get away with wearing the same trousers for a week, barring a spill in the lab, but two days in Florida humidity had left the pair he had been wearing uncomfortably grimy from sweat.

He added the pen Rosemary had given him, and made a mental note to get a notebook small enough to fit in his pocket. The one he had been using in Russia had disappeared with his coat.

And then there was a knock on his door, and he hastily finished tying his shoes and went to answer it.

“Here,” Rosemary said, handing him a travel mug. Karl took it automatically. “I'm not entirely heartless. Coffee. And from my kitchen, not the cafeteria.”

“Thank you,” Karl said, a little startled, both by the mug and by today’s outfit. Rosemary had swapped the teal suit of the past few days for a purple one, with a truly astonishing blouse patterned in pink and purple and bright flashes of green underneath.

He took a cautious sip as they made their way out of the apartment complex, expecting black coffee and instead getting a rich, creamy mouthful, perfectly sweetened. “ _Oh._ This is good.”

“Well, I should hope so. Now, come along. We've got twelve minutes to make it to the training facility.”

“Training facility?”

“For space missions.”

“Why are we going there?”

“I told you, it's a surprise.”

Karl sighed and focused on the coffee. Clearly he was going to get no answers from Rosemary, or at least not until they reached their destination.

When they reached the building in question, Rosemary let them in with her keycard and lead Karl through a dizzying maze of corridors and stairs, finally coming to a halt in front of a door labeled “Observation 2,” which she opened. There was a large glass window on one side, looking down into a cavernous room that appeared to have some kind of habitat set up in it: a prefabricated dome-shaped structure of some sort, with what seemed to be an airlock at the end closest to the window. The other side of the room they were in was covered in television monitors, which were being watched over by a heavy-set middle-aged man.

“Lucas. How did their first seclusion trial go?”

The man glanced up. “Pretty well, Rosie. Though I'm sure they'll be glad to get a break from one another while they still can.”

Karl had glanced at the monitors as he had come in, but Rosemary had shooed him away towards the window instead, so the only impression he had gotten was a vague one of people-shaped objects moving. For lack of anything better to do, he stared out the window at the dome, sipping his coffee and tuning out the sound of Rosemary bantering with Lucas.

And then the airlock opened and people started to emerge from the habitat, and Karl choked on the sip of coffee he had just taken. A firm hand—Rosemary’s—thumped him on the back as he coughed, trying to catch his breath once more.

“Could have warned me,” he wheezed at Rosemary once he had regained enough breath to speak.

“But where would have been the fun in that?” She grinned up at him. “Want to go intercept him?”

“ _Da_.”

“Then let’s go.” Rosemary thanked Lucas and whisked Karl back out of the room and down one floor. “If you don't mind, I'm going to store you here for a moment,” she said, opening the door on a small room that looked like it might be a waiting room of sorts, with comfortable chairs around the edge. “I suspect this is not a reunion you'll want to have in front of other people.”

Karl nodded, unable to speak, and fell into one of the chairs as soon as she closed the door behind her.

A few minutes later, the door opened and Viktor Stukov stepped into the room.

“Dr. Stukov,” Dmitri said breathlessly, setting the to-go cup he had been clutching to his chest on the chair next to the one he was sitting in, and then getting to his feet. “ _Viktor._ ”

Viktor smiled and crossed the room to Dmitri, clasping his forearm in a familiar gesture and pulling him into a brief, one-armed hug. “Dmitri. It is good to see you.”

“How— _why_?” Dmitri had lapsed into Russian once more, too startled by the familiar face of his friend—one he had thought dead the past year—to manage English. And after all, it would not be necessary with Viktor.

“Why did I come here?” Viktor laughed. “You know why. I needed more funding than the party was able to give me. And…” he paused for a moment, head tilted to one side. “I think you know that it is safer here for a man with my… preferences. Perhaps not much, but I may live freely here, and that is enough.”

A thing that had not factored in to Dmitri’s decision at all, but sex never had. But for Viktor, it might have. “And you told Mr. Carter about me.”

Viktor looked guilty. “Do you blame me?”

Dmitri shook his head. “No. It came at an… opportune time. Though perhaps I could have asked for a less violent removal.”

“Tell me,” Viktor said, and picked the travel mug up off the chair Dmitri had set it in before sitting there himself. Dmitri sank back into the chair he had been occupying and poured the whole story out to Viktor, taking the mug back and holding it clasped protectively to his chest as he did. Viktor listened attentively, making all the appropriate little noises of comfort as he did, eventually wrapping a comforting arm across Dmitri’s hunched shoulders.

“Mr. Carter can be… intense,” Viktor said when Dmitri finished. “That was certainly more violent than my removal, but I was not bringing research with me.”

“What do you think has happened to Kostya?” Dmitri asked.

Viktor sighed. “He was very involved with your retrovirus research?”

“He could not recreate it on his own, and of course he was not as well-versed in the details as I was, but… yes. Yes, he was very involved.”

The expression on Viktor’s face said more than words could.

“You think he is dead.”

Viktor shrugged. “If Mr. Carter did not remove him as well, when he removed you… then yes. It is likely.” Dmitri frowned and Viktor clapped him on the back. “But do not worry so. Goddard has many subsidiaries. If he is not here, he could easily be at one of them.”

Viktor’s tone of voice was utterly unconvincing, but Dmitri forced himself to smile. “Do you think so?”

“I am certain of it,” Viktor said, still unconvincing. He clapped Dmitri on the back and then lounged backwards in the chair, folding his hands over his stomach. “Now, let us speak of something else. What terrible name have these people given you?”

Dmitri laughed and relaxed as well. “Karl Kelley. You?”

Viktor made a face. “Elias Selberg. Though why Elias when a proper Ilya would do…”

“You are going to space?” Dmitri remembered, suddenly, what building they were in.

Viktor nodded. “Replacement crew for one of their relay stations. I will be medical officer.”

“And your research?”

“I will be continuing it out there, and exploring some new opportunities. Several of my crew mates have conditions that require regular care, and we wish to see how they will be affected by long-term exposure to microgravity and certain forms of stellar radiation.” Viktor inclined his head in Dmitri’s direction. “Perhaps something you should consider.”

“I will.” The thought that he might take his research to space had not even occurred to him, and was equal parts thrilling and terrifying.

Just then, his stomach rumbled loudly, interrupting that train of thought, and he remembered that he had not eaten anything yet that morning and had forgotten supper the night before. The half a mug of coffee he had managed before being distracted by Viktor was doing little for his hunger. “You can leave this place?”

Viktor nodded.

“Would you care to go to meal at cafeteria?”

“Ah, no. Let me take you someplace remarkable instead.”

Dmitri held up the mug he had been clutching to his chest. “Very well. We can stop by apartments? I wish to return this to Rosemary.”

“Ah, that woman.” Viktor got to his feet. “Yes, of course.”

“Why do you say it that way?” Dmitri asked as he followed Viktor from the room.

“Hm. How to say.” Viktor lapsed into a contemplative silence for a few moments before continuing. “She catches the eye, no? All those bright colors, and that smile of hers. And of course, she knows everyone and everyone knows her.” He paused again and glanced around, as if checking to make sure they were alone in the hall. “And everyone also knows that she is Mr. Carter’s favorite bitch.”

Dmitri frowned, a little defensive. Rosemary had been kind to him for the most part, and he did not like the implication of what Viktor had just said. “And what does that mean?”

“Information is power, yes? It gives you leverage over others. And Mr. Carter, he likes leverage. He likes to know what weak points he can press to keep people in line.”

“So she is an informant.” Dmitri’s heart sank, remembering his slip the day before when he had almost revealed what his work meant to him.

Viktor nodded. “Like most poisonous creatures, she is very pretty to look at. But still poison.”

“Thank you for warning.” Dmitri frowned. “But I cannot avoid her entirely, you know. She is lab manager.”

Viktor laughed. “Ah, lucky man. You will have best-run lab on campus.”

“You call her poison and yet complement her work.” They pushed out the front doors of the training facility into a warm, humid afternoon. “She is not to be trusted with secrets, you say, but I cannot keep them all from her if she is to do her job properly.”

“You will find a balance. That is what Eber tells me, and he would know. He has worked with her for a decade.”

“Eber?”

Viktor blushed. “Eber Weiss. My… my partner.”

“Viktor.” Dmitri smiled. “Do not say that you have become a domestic man.”

“We have apartment together. Off campus.” Viktor seemed both pleased and defiant. “He is…” He sighed. “There are not words. I will miss him terribly.”

“I am happy for you.”

Viktor seemed to take that as permission to wax rhapsodic about his partner for the rest of the walk to the apartment complex, and Dmitri listened with a tolerant ear. The feelings Viktor had for his partner were unfamiliar to Dmitri, but it was very good to see Viktor so relaxed and happy; the last time Dmitri had seen Viktor, more than a year ago, it had seemed that Viktor was shrinking in on himself, becoming more and more miserable. Back then, the news of Viktor’s death had not come as a surprise. It had been an inevitability.

But it was clear that this Viktor had something to live for now. And more than that, he seemed to be adjusting to his new life here, and that left Dmitri hopeful that he would someday be as comfortable with these circumstances as Viktor was.

Dmitri knocked on Rosemary’s door, but got no response.

“She is probably in lab complex,” Viktor said. “Eber is doing observation under quarantine. She would wish to be close at hand in case of emergency. You should just leave mug in hallway.”

Dmitri shook his head. “I would not wish to lose it. And it is still half full.” He went next door to his own apartment instead, dumping the contents down the sink and rinsing it. Viktor stood near him, looking around the apartment’s poky kitchen with an expression of disgust.

“I do not miss these apartments,” he said, and then turned a sly look on Dmitri. “Tell me, how is Rosemary as a neighbor?”

“Unobjectionable. I have only been here three days, Viktor.”

“Hm. Perhaps you should put in request for transfer to different apartment now. The list is long. It may be a while before one becomes available. Or look for place off campus.”

Dmitri shook the mug out and set it in the drying rack, giving Viktor an irritable look. “Do you know something I do not?”

Viktor shrugged. “Rumors, only. But there is reason that this apartment was empty when you arrived.”

“And why would that be?” Dmitri herded Viktor back out of his apartment and locked up.

“I have heard that Rosemary is a loud neighbor, that is all.” Viktor took the lead again, and Dmitri followed him back out of the apartment complex.

“I can deal with noise.”

“No, ah…” Viktor paused significantly. “She is _loud_. In bedroom.”

Dmitri blanched. “And is this another of those things that everyone knows?”

“Gossip is the lifeblood of this company, and Rosemary is notorious. Do you not think that such a rumor would find its way to every ear?”

“I have heard no such sounds,” Dmitri said. “I will give no credence to rumors like that without proof.”

“Ah, well, if you change your mind, I am always happy to help with apartment search.” Viktor lead Dmitri down a set of paths that opened on to another parking lot, a gate visible at the far end. He fumbled at his pockets for a moment before pulling out a set of keys, all the while looking over the cars in the lot. “Now where did Eber park it… Ah!” He took off again, Dmitri a few steps behind, and came to a halt by a luxurious looking sedan. “Here we are.”

“We are leaving the campus?”

“Yes.”

Dmitri frowned. Surely a place like Goddard Futuristics would have some security measures meant to keep unknown people off of the campus. “What do I need to get back in?”

“You have your keycard?”

“Yes.”

“That will do for now.”

Dmitri slid into the car, fighting to breathe in the overheated air inside, though that changed quickly as Viktor turned on what was obviously a very efficient air conditioner. The smooth leather seat was hot against his back and legs, but comforting in spite of it, soothing some of the tension he had been carrying. “Where are we going?” he asked once they were through the gate and out on what he suspected were public roads.

Viktor laughed. “An all-you-can-eat buffet.”

Dmitri stared. “A joke, surely. No such thing exists.”

Viktor only smiled in response. It was only when they got there, when Viktor lead the way into the restaurant and paid the entry price up front, when Dmitri beheld what was on offer, that he finally understood the extent to which Viktor had not been joking.

“This cannot exist,” he muttered. “There must be some catch.”

“Ah, yes, there is. You must like Southern American cuisine,” Viktor said, guiding Dmitri to where plates were stacked. “But if you do…”

The meal was glorious and gluttonous, with so many of the dishes on offer rich with butter and cream, with so many different preparations of meat. None of it was familiar, but most of it was delicious.

“You have free afternoon?” Viktor asked when they were done.

Rosemary had not told him otherwise, so Dmitri nodded.

“Then come. I will take you around Cape Canaveral.”

“Ah, no, please. I have had tours enough these past few days. Could we not simply… simply talk? I find…” Dmitri sighed. “I find myself very lost.”

Viktor studied him for a long moment before reaching across the table to pat him on the arm. “Of course. We will go to beach. Easiest to find a place where no one is listening.”

A worry that had not occurred to Dmitri.

Neither Victor nor Dmitri spoke again until they were walking down a sandy beach. The wind had come up and the temperature had dropped, a few clouds were racing across the sky, and Dmitri felt just a little bit more at home.

“What do you want to know?”

Dmitri considered. “Who must I avoid angering?”

“I am sure you have seen enough to know that Mr. Carter is true seat of power at Goddard, yes?”

Dmitri let out a huff of breath that was almost a laugh. “Yes. And?”

“He has his… lieutenants, I suppose you would call them. Department heads, mostly. Your Rosemary is one of them.”

“And Dr. Dolmetsch?”

“The archivist?” Viktor frowned and seemed to be considering. “No. She answers to no one. Not even Mr. Carter. But her sphere of influence does not stretch beyond archives.”

“Is there anyone I can trust?”

Another considering pause from Viktor, and then, “No.”

Dmitri forced a laugh out. “Not even you, my friend?”

Viktor simply looked at him sadly for a long minute.

“I see.” Dmitri ground to a halt and dropped down to sit on the sand, staring out at the waves. Eventually, Viktor dropped down to a crouch next to him, his hand on Dmitri’s shoulder.

“I will keep what confidences I am able, Dmitri, but this place… it has a way of compelling them out of you, you understand. Mr. Carter is…” Dmitri was still staring at the waves, but he could feel Viktor’s shudder in the hand Viktor had left on Dmitri’s shoulder. “I do not even share with Eber anything that I would not want to make its way to that man, you understand? The only safe place for a secret is locked up tight in your mind.”

“I understand,” Dmitri said quietly.

“Shall we continue our walk?”

“Yes.” Dmitri got to his feet and trailed Viktor along the beach, both of them sunk deep in a contemplative silence. After a while, they turned back the way they had come. By that point, Dmitri’s legs were screaming with the effort of walking on shifting sand for so long, and so, to distract himself, he broke the silence.

“We can be colleagues?”

Viktor shot him a grateful smile. “Yes, of course.”

“And perhaps acquaintances. Of the sort you would have a drink with, from time to time.”

“For as long as I have left before I go, and once I return.”

“Very well. Then we shall be that.”

They went for that drink after that, and an evening meal in Viktor’s apartment, keeping the air between them full of light conversation that never quite made it past generalities.

It was dark when they returned to Goddard’s campus, and Viktor took Dmitri to the parking lot attached to the apartment complex without asking.

“Thank you,” Dmitri said stiffly, sliding out of the car. “I will see you soon?”

Viktor smiled. “I must have you over for dinner with Eber some time soon.”

Dmitri nodded and shut the car door, and then, Viktor was gone.

From the outside of the complex, Dmitri could see that a light was on in the apartment next to his, and so he only stepped into his own apartment long enough to reclaim the travel mug. Rosemary answered his hesitant knock on her door as if she had been waiting for him.

“Thank you for coffee,” he said, holding the mug out, reluctant to look at her face for fear that he would catch sight of one of those blinding smiles that made it so easy to like this woman. “And for…”

Rosemary reached out, but instead of taking the mug from him, she clasped her hand over his, her palm warm and smooth. He looked up, startled, but instead of smiling, her face was serious. She studied him carefully, and Dmitri could hardly bring himself to draw breath; looking away would have been impossible. Finally she nodded and her hand released his, plucking the travel mug from his hand. “Good. You've found your feet.”

“Have I?” He did not feel like it. He felt more lost than ever.

“Well enough for what’s ahead. Get a good night’s sleep. Be ready by eight.” Rosemary withdrew into her apartment, making as if to close the door, and Dmitri put his hand out to prevent it without thinking. She paused, giving him a quizzical look.

“Do you know what he called you?”

Rosemary smiled. “Carter’s favorite bitch, I would imagine.” She let out a short bark of laughter. “Oh, your face.”

“So it is true that anything you learn of me will make its way to him.”

She held his eye for a long moment. “Better to learn it now instead of months down the line.”

“I suppose it is.” Dmitri let his hand drop to his side again.

Rosemary bit her lower lip, a small nervous motion that caught his eye before he could turn away completely. “I'm sorry. That you had to learn it like this.”

“As you say, better now than later,” he heard his own voice say. And then he turned away and returned to his own apartment.

He did not hear her door close until he was behind his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Rosemary's outfit, because I drew it.](https://madstuart.tumblr.com/post/186817047233/she-catches-the-eye-no-all-those-bright-colors)


	10. Transcript: First Impressions

**TRANSCRIPT TAKEN FROM THE FILE OF DMITRI VOLOGIN**

**DATE:** January 21st, 1989, 9:04 PM-9:15 PM

**LOCATION:** Goddard Futuristics, Communications Division

**PARTICIPANTS:**

William CARTER, head of Communications at Goddard Futuristics

Rosemary EPPS, Head Lab Manager of the Biochem Research Division, Goddard Futuristics

**[RECORDING STARTS]**

**EPPS:** Good evening, sir.

**CARTER:** Rosemary. Thank you for coming in so late. I know you've had a long day.

**EPPS:** No trouble at all, sir.

**CARTER:** So tell me. How is your new pet is settling in?

**EPPS:** Hard to tell just yet. But it's all in my report. I'm sure you don't need me to recount the entire thing.

**CARTER:** But your first impressions are always so valuable. What do you think? Does he measure up to his profile?

**EPPS: [LAUGHTER]** Not if you listen to Adriane. **[PAUSE]** I think he'll be cautious a while yet, and that could affect his output. It might help if he had an ally.

**CARTER:** You have my permission to introduce dear Viktor into the mix, if that's what you're asking about.

**EPPS:** Thank you.

**CARTER:** But it seems as if he will adjust well to his new circumstances, given the appropriate support?

**EPPS:** I don’t know that we’ll ever make an American of him, and I think that living in a swamp is going to be a bit of an adjustment, but he'll do. Though I suspect he’s likely to be the sort to cling to lab work in lieu of interacting with the outside world, even if Dr. Selberg helps.

**CARTER:** What makes you say that? **[PAUSE]** Rosemary?

**EPPS** : He’s… I’m not quite sure how to put it. **[PAUSE]** I might be reading too much into our interview, but if I did get an accurate read on him… **[PAUSE]**

**CARTER:** You know I trust your instincts on this sort of thing, Rosemary.

**EPPS:** Hm. Then I'd say that that virus is wife, child, and religion to him. Making it work matters more than anything else to him, and more than that, he believes in it. Truly and deeply, with more certainty than he believes in anything else.

**CARTER:** I see. Well _._ That’s definitely information worth knowing about our dear Dr. Kelley. **[PAUSE, THE SOUND OF PAPER RUSTLING]** I thought it might be something of that sort when I met him myself, but it’s good to get a second opinion. **[PAUSE]** Will he take direction?”

**EPPS: [LAUGHTER]** Better than some others, I think. He seemed almost excited to have his research so far ripped apart. Threw himself right in to stitching it back together in a new form, and I think his work on the Koschei Bessmertny virus will be stronger for it, though I'll have to see what he’s made of his notes before saying that definitely.

**CARTER:** We really do need to do some rebranding there. **[PAUSE]** I was thinking Decima _._

**EPPS:** Sounds like a sports car.

**CARTER:** From the sound of things, it’s the sports car of retroviruses. Powerful and fast.

**EPPS:** Fair enough. I’ll run it by Dr. Kelley on Monday.

**CARTER:** No, no. I think Decima is it. Let him know. **[PAUSE, THE SOUND OF PAPER RUSTLING]** You’ll get another report to me when things get underway properly, won’t you?

**EPPS:** Of course, sir. Will that be all?

**CARTER:** For tonight.

**[RECORDING ENDS]**


	11. Checking In

**March 20th, 1989, 3:47 PM**

It had taken Karl a more than a month to realize that Rosemary had been correct that evening: he _had_ found his feet, and better yet, he had stayed on them.

Work helped. Work, and the way Rosemary laid into him any time he brought her a report or research proposal that wasn't thought out in sufficient detail, forcing him to think his flights of fancy through before committing resources. He had his work, and an apartment he knew the shape of when he woke in the dark, and a name that was beginning to sit more easily on his shoulders.

He did not have friends. Oh, yes, he had gone to Viktor’s apartment a time or three for meals, had met Viktor’s partner, Eber, had even gotten to the point where he reliably recognized a number of the other scientists who worked in the building well enough to greet them when he encountered them… but, well, small talk had never been his strong suit, and small talk was all that was safe.

Not that anyone seemed particularly keen to engage in even so much as small talk with someone so obviously Russian. He had been startled the first time he had heard Viktor speak more than a few words of English, when he had finally heard the full impact of the broad American accent Viktor now affected, but now Karl understood. Unfortunately, when Karl tried to do the same, he found the vowels and consonants eluded him, so he no longer tried.

“We could get you a vocal coach,” Rosemary had suggested, during those first rough weeks on the job.

Somehow, while he could tolerate the loss of everything else, the thought of changing his voice was a bridge too far. He had shaken his head in response to that query, and Rosemary had not mentioned the subject since.

It had become easier, this stripping away of who he had been, but there was still a violence to it. A violence to living in such regimented circumstances, for all that some part of him appreciated the routine, a violence to not having control over what projects were assigned to him next, for all that Rosemary seemed to have an uncanny knack for selecting side projects that would challenge him just enough to spark inspiration for his work on Decima.

Ah, and there was the greatest violence of them all. His retrovirus, his life’s work, the name stripped away, replaced with a flashy word that meant nothing.

Rosemary had done her best to sell it to him, though she had seemed as unhappy with the change as he was himself. Still, her words had almost been a comfort at the time.

“Decima,” she had said, thoughtful and distant. “One out of every ten. That’s how many of the original inhabitants survived Volgograd. How many of the children who born within ten years of the meltdown survived to adulthood. One out of every ten, and those are odds you beat.” She had looked directly at him then, lifting her chin, as if challenging him. “So. Decima. For that one out of every ten. For the odds you intend to beat again.”

Perhaps those words were still almost a comfort, though some days they felt more like a goad, a constant prod towards progress.

Perhaps Rosemary had meant them as both.

Rosemary… ah, Rosemary. For all that Viktor had warned him against trusting her, for all that Karl had not intended it, she had somehow become his touchstone, the solid, dependable center of his world. Sometimes he wanted… he did not know what he wanted from her.

She worked side by side with him on occasion, bustling her way into his lab to help him set up experiments, or to feed and extract samples from his mice on days when the lab techs who were assigned to him were needed elsewhere. During their check-ins, she tore his work apart with keen, piercing questions, and then threw literature at him to provide context. And he knew, he _knew_ that she supported every one of the other four scientists she oversaw in the same way, for all that some of them were working on things he barely understood himself. Above and beyond that, he knew that Dr. Pryce, who had the status of a legendary figure within the company, depended on her.

Rosemary should not have been a lab manager. She was wasted on it.

That she was a good lab manager—the best he had ever had—was without question. But it was clear she was capable of so much more, and more than anything else about her, the mystery of why she was not _doing_ it nagged at him.

She was terrifying.

She was glorious.

And she was currently extremely annoyed with him.

“You are late for your check-in, Dr. Kelley.” Rosemary had gotten his attention by slamming open the door to his lab and was now glaring at him. “And worse than that, you left your lab phone off the hook. I do make allowances for your forgetfulness, but this is the third week in a row. Do I need to set an alarm?”

Karl was too startled to respond. He had been hunched over a lab table, the latest genetic analysis of the current strain of Decima spread in front of him as he took notes on the mutations that had appeared since last he had sequenced its genome, and had not registered the passage of time for some hours, had completely forgotten his start-of-week check-in with Rosemary. His stomach broke the silence with a loud growl; lunch had been another casualty of his single-minded concentration.

Rosemary sighed and rubbed two fingers against her temple. “Honestly, you are hopeless. I stash protein bars in your storage cabinet for a reason.” She crossed the room in short, brisk strides, opening a cabinet and rooting around in it for a few moments before turning, protein bar in hand.

He had expected her to bring it to him. It was only quick thinking on his part that stopped the protein bar from taking out his glasses as she tossed it at his head. “Eat,” she said, glaring at him again. “And then you’re going to find a good stopping point in your little analysis—” she gestured expressively at the papers spread across the lab table “—and then you are going to come to my office for your check-in, and if I’m not there, you’ll just have to be the one to wait for me, hm?” She punctuated the sentence with a pair of raised eyebrows that boded ill for him if he did not do exactly as she said.

Karl nodded, already ripping into the package of the protein bar, suddenly ravenous. Rosemary turned and stalked out of his lab, obviously in high dudgeon, and Karl found himself watching her until she cleared his lab door, mesmerized by a bright flash of orange from today’s overly colorful ascot from where it peeked out from beneath her hair.

Karl shook his head to clear it and returned to his work. He marked his place with several sticky notes and shuffled the papers into a stack, storing the lot in one of the filing cabinets that locked. His lab techs picked up more than they probably ought to, given how closely they worked with him, but best to keep them in the dark about some things. And if he was correct about this latest set of mutations he had been tracking… well, best to wait and see what the virus did in the next batch of test animals to be sure.

When Karl finally made it to Rosemary’s office, it was empty except for her assistant, Charles, who told Karl in an officious tone that Miss Epps was helping put out a fire over in one of the other labs, and no, Charles didn’t know for sure whether it was a metaphorical fire or an literal one, but that wasn’t any of Dr. Kelley’s business, now was it?

Karl sat in the chair closest to the door with a sigh. He would not have put it beyond her to manufacture a crisis just to make him wait, a way of punishing him for his forgetfulness earlier in the day. Charles finished whatever small task he was working on and left Karl in the office, leaving the door open behind him. And then, Karl waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After half an hour, he had started to wish he had brought another one of the protein bars with him, but then Rosemary bustled in and around him to sit at her desk, and he forgot his hunger.

“Well,” she said, in the bitchy, officious tone she used when she was particularly annoyed, “Shall we finally get on with it?”

Karl nodded. “My apologies.”

She sniffed irritably and pulled his file out. “Tell me what kept you, then.” She glanced up over his shoulder and jerked her chin to one side, and Karl glanced back over his shoulder just in time to see Charles disappearing behind Rosemary’s office door as he shut it behind him.

“I, uh…”

“He’ll bring you a sandwich. Talk.”

Karl took a deep breath. “There are certain genetic markers that appear to have been activated with the latest set of radiation trials. I hope… but I cannot know until we begin next round of testing.”

Rosemary accepted this disjointed explanation of Karl’s current activities with a dubious look. “So what you're saying is you're back in the hurry up and wait part of the process.”

“Hm. Or will be, once latest strain is propagated to lab mice.”

“Right. In that case, get a brief on my desk by… when, this time tomorrow?” At his nod, she continued. “And we’ll have another little meeting then to discuss what you'll be working on in the meantime.”

“Very well. Are we done for today?”

“Not until Charles gets back with your sandwich.”

“I really do not need—” Karl’s stomach let out another loud growl, betraying him before he could finish protesting.

“You were saying?”

“I was saying that a sandwich sounds good, actually.”

Rosemary grinned. “Good boy.” She shuffled some papers on her desk, studiously ignoring him for a moment, so that her pointed “And how is your social life developing?” caught him by surprise.

“I… ah…”

“We really can get you a vocal coach, if you want one. Dr. Selberg certainly took us up on it.”

Karl winced, and let out a low, frustrated hiss of breath. He had been hoping that was a subject she would never mention again. “I have nothing else left to me. May I not at least continue to be Russian?”

“Your immortal sorcerer is alive and well, even if it’s going by a different name these days.” Rosemary’s voice was gentle, understanding, and if that sympathy she spoke to him with was false, he would have no way to know it. “It would make your life easier, you know.”

Karl shook his head, and Rosemary rolled her eyes and muttered something that he thought might be “stubborn man” under her breath.

“Well, at least you've been to dinner a few times with your old friend. Do you suppose you'll keep that up with Dr. Weiss once Dr. Selberg is in space?”

“I… I do not know.” The dinners had not been frequent enough for Karl to get a good idea of whether he would have any sort of rapport with Eber Weiss in the absence of Viktor Stukov… and Viktor’s mission would launch in mere weeks now. For all that they had not regained the closeness they had once had, Karl knew he would miss having another Russian around.

Rosemary sighed. “Darling boy, I hate to say it, but you really need to work on that. Us humans are social animals by nature.”

“I spend time with Aditi and Andrew.”

“Working silently in the same room as your lab techs until they do something wrong that you can yell at them for is _not_ the same as socializing with them.”

“I seem to be socializing with you.”

Rosemary shot him a look that was distinctly unamused. “And look where that’s got you, hm? Almost two months on the job and no friends to speak of.” She sighed again and sat back in her chair, fiddling with a pen. “I'm too close to Carter, Dr. Kelley. You're doing yourself no favors by trying to be friendly with me.”

“Perhaps I have decided that you are only person here worth being friendly with.” Karl was not certain where those words had come from, but they rang true all the same.

One of Rosemary’s eyebrows quirked upwards dangerously, but before Karl got to hear her response, there was a knock on her office door.

“Come in!”

The door opened to reveal Charles with a small package wrapped in brown paper in hand. He offered it to Karl, and disappeared back down the hall to his own office once Karl took it.

“Ah, good. Your sandwich. Now back to work, Dr. Kelley!” Rosemary’s tone was brisk and brooked no refusal, giving Karl only enough space around it to stand and nod his thanks and leave.

He checked his wristwatch as he left Rosemary’s office; Aditi would be in the lab now, cleaning the day’s glassware and taking care of the surviving mice from the last set of Decima trials. After Rosemary's snipe about him only interacting with his lab techs to yell at them, he did not particularly feel up to encountering her. Instead he made his way out onto Goddard’s campus, wandering aimlessly until he found himself at a familiar water feature, its cascading pools swollen with rain, the sound of the water in motion a soothing counterpoint to the noise in his mind as he settled on the bench that overlooked it.

The sandwich had too much mayonnaise, but given that any amount of mayonnaise was too much mayonnaise and Americans seemed to be obsessed with putting it on their sandwiches, he had grown resigned to such culinary atrocities.

He sighed and slumped back on the bench when he finished the sandwich, ignoring the paper wrapper as a breeze snatched it out of his hand and took off with it into the bushes. Two months, give or take, and all that top-of-the-line lab equipment, and he was no further along than he had been. Oh, that latest set of mutations truly _was_ promising, and he had gotten much better at managing the progression of Decima, of finding a drug regime that kept his lab mice alive long enough for the retrovirus to do its work, and of course he knew that any progress he made would be slow, the result of many iterations… but it was frustrating to have to admit that resources had not been the reason for his lack of progress in the past.

If he was not careful, he would become as neurotic as one of the mice he did his testing on. Perhaps Rosemary was right. Perhaps he did need to work on his social life. He was not accustomed to wasting his evenings in the company of others, but right now, the thought had some appeal, for all that he loathed small talk.

He would stop by Dr. Weiss’ lab on his way back to his own and see if the other man would like to have a drink after work to unwind. After all, Eber would most likely be free, what with Viktor busy preparing for his trip into space.

Yes. Karl would do that.

Of course he would.


	12. Transcript: Funzo

**TRANSCRIPT TAKEN FROM THE FILE OF ROSEMARY EPPS**

**DATE:** August 27th, 1976, from 6:25 PM to 11:48 PM

 **LOCATION:** Goddard Futuristics Administration Complex, Meeting Room B2

**PARTICIPANTS:**

Rosemary EPPS, lab manager at Goddard Futuristics

Albert BENNETT, [redacted]

Arthur KELLER, head of Communications at Goddard Futuristics

Miranda PRYCE, research scientist at Goddard Futuristics

**[RECORDING STARTS]**

**EPPS:** So what’s this about, then?

 **BENNETT:** Board games, darlin’.

 **EPPS** : Well I got that part. But why, exactly, have I been invited to play board games with you and my bosses?

 **BENNETT:** Maybe they just want to get to know you outside of work.

 **EPPS:** Hah! As if those two have any social life at all. **[PAUSE]** Outside of one another, that is.

 **BENNETT:** See you picked up on that right quick.

 **EPPS** : It’s none of my business, but really, Al, they're far too obvious about it.

 **BENNETT:** Mm. Come give me a hand with this. **[SOUND OF CABINET OPENING AND CLOSING]**

 **EPPS:** What’s this? **[PAUSE]** “Funzo! The Craziest Board Game of 1973.” Really, Al?

 **BENNETT:** Played it?

 **EPPS:** I've never even heard of it.

 **BENNETT:** I'm not surprised. It had a limited run. Now open that box and help me get things set up.

**[SOUNDS OF PLASTIC PIECES BEING SLOTTED TOGETHER, PAPER CRINKLING, CARDS SHUFFLING]**

**EPPS:** This looks like it’s gotten a lot of use.

 **BENNETT:** The manual has all the pieces and their counts listed, if you want to make sure nothing’s missing.

 **EPPS:** Thank you, I will. Let’s see… what kind of a game needs eleven different decks of cards, anyway?

 **BENNETT:** You’ll see.

 **EPPS:** Very enlightening.

**[SILENCE FOR TEN MINUTES, PUNCTUATED BY INCOHERENT, IRRITATED MUTTERING AND THE SOUND OF CARDS BEING SHUFFLED THROUGH]**

**EPPS:** God, what a mess.

 **BENNETT:** Satisfied that everything’s present and accounted for?

 **EPPS:** And pretty sure that this game’s going to end with me murdering someone.

 **BENNETT:** Well, there haven’t been any officially reported Funzo-related deaths…

 **EPPS:** Yeah, yeah, but if you told me about the unofficial ones you’d have to kill me. Hand that manual back over. I’d like to brush up on the rules a bit more before Pryce and Keller get here.

**[SOUND OF DOOR OPENING]**

**KELLER:** Did someone say my name?

 **EPPS:** Or not. Good evening, Mr. Keller. Dr. Pryce.

 **KELLER:** Good evening, Rosemary. Thank you so much for joining us.

 **EPPS:** My pleasure.

 **KELLER:** Looks like everything is set up, so there’s just picking teams. As the new player, Rosemary, you—

 **EPPS:** Dr. Pryce.

 **KELLER:** I see. Making your loyalties known right off the bat, aren’t you.

 **PRYCE:** Arthur, please. Can we just play? This game is annoying enough without you dragging your mind games into it.

 **KELLER:** Very well. First turn goes to the youngest.

 **PRYCE:** Which would be me, for once. Rosemary, are you ready?

 **EPPS:** Let’s do this.

**[CUT MATERIAL: FOUR AND A HALF HOURS OF FUNZO GAMEPLAY, EXTREMELY BORING]**

**BENNETT:** And… Reality Storm.

 **EPPS:** “The team that manages to play the Golden Loyalty Card in the next minute wins the game.” Miranda?

 **PRYCE:** Sorry. Not in my hand.

 **KELLER:** And I’m afraid that’s the game, unless you’ve got a last-minute miracle, Al.

 **BENNETT:** Afraid not, sir.

 **EPPS:** Which means… let’s see. **[SOUND OF PAGES TURNING** ] Oh.

 **KELLER:** Like I said. That’s the game.

 **EPPS:** I see.

 **KELLER:** Good game, Rosemary.

 **EPPS:** Indeed.

 **PRYCE:** Are we done, then, Arthur?

 **KELLER:** Yes, yes, I’ve had my fun. You’ll clean up, Al?

 **BENNETT:** Of course, sir.

 **KELLER:** Have a good night, you two.

 **PRYCE:** Bennett. Rosemary.

 **EPPS:** Good night. **[PAUSE, SOUND OF DOOR OPENING AND CLOSING]** Okay, really Al, what the hell was that about?

 **BENNETT** : I don’t know what you mean.

 **EPPS:** Albert. Please.

 **BENNETT:** What do you think it was about?

 **EPPS:** Well, obviously, the first thing he wanted to see was who I would choose as my teammate.

 **BENNETT:** Why Dr. Pryce, by the way?

 **EPPS:** Mr. Keller might have been the one who hired me, but I wanted them both to know that if it comes down to it, my loyalty is to the work being done, not to whatever little political games he’s playing with the results.

 **BENNETT:** Think you’re reading a little too much into this whole evening, Rosie.

 **EPPS:** Am I?

 **BENNETT:** You said that was the first thing.

 **EPPS:** It’s a game of iterations. Like research. You have to reproduce things for them to be valid, do the same things over and over, but that doesn’t mean that the universe can’t throw a wrench in the works that makes everything you’ve done up to that point meaningless. And if you’re not careful, that can lead to… erratic behavior.

 **BENNETT:** And what does that have to do with your little theory about why Keller wanted you to play this board game?

 **EPPS:** He wanted to make sure I would keep my eye on the endpoint, and not get too frustrated with what can feel like senseless busy work, because it’s all necessary. Although…

 **BENNETT:** Although?

 **EPPS:** Hand me the loyalty deck for a minute, would you?

 **BENNETT:** Sure thing, darlin’.

 **EPPS:** I could have sworn… **[THE SOUND OF CARDS SHUFFLING]** We went through this thing twice, Al. I would have seen it, if it wasn’t in someone’s hand.

 **BENNETT** : What’s that, then?

 **EPPS:** The Golden Loyalty card. There isn’t one. Not in this deck, at least. Hand me the next one.

 **[FIVE MINUTES OF SILENCE, PUNCTUATED BY THE SOUND OF CARDS BEING SHUFFLED THROUGH** ]

 **EPPS:** I thought so. There isn’t a Golden Loyalty card in any of these decks. And they’ve still got all their cards.

 **BENNETT:** That memory of yours is impressive.

 **EPPS:** And Keller had to know that. You all did. **[PAUSE]** So, what, this game isn’t winnable at all? Or I guess if you get it done before the Reality Storm comes out… but that would take a hell of a lot of luck.

 **BENNETT:** You’re seeing why this game only had a limited release.

 **EPPS:** But maybe that’s the lesson I’m supposed to take from this. Be lucky, win fast, or no one wins at all.

 **BENNETT:** Hell of a theory, Rosie.

 **EPPS:** Oh, quit being an enigmatic ass and help me get this mess cleaned up.

**[RECORDING ENDS]**

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A New Beginning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20252476) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory)
  * [The Way They Lived](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20369032) by [ssrhpurgatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory)




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